


Sorry Baby

by the_queenmaker



Category: K-pop, NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Blood and Violence, M/M, Murder, Psychopaths In Love, Stalking, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-07
Updated: 2019-06-21
Packaged: 2020-01-06 09:15:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 26,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18385460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_queenmaker/pseuds/the_queenmaker
Summary: "I believe that all these assassinations were carried out by one person," Doyoung says. "They don't have a signature, but they havestyle, and I just found that to be really interesting."Taeyong's perfectly shaped eyebrow rises about half a centimeter, but it's too late now, Doyoung's on a roll."But no one is looking into it. None of these agencies speak to one another and all of them are more than happy to write them off as accidental or random murders. I don't know who's behind this guy--or girl--or why they do what they do, but they're getting away with it, and no one cares. Well, I cared. But then I got fired for it, so I guess it's not my job to care anymore. Which. Fine. Whatever. I'm glad they're getting away with it."[Killing Eve AU]





	1. Nice Face

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ouvertes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ouvertes/gifts).



> You don't need to have a working knowledge of Killing Eve to read this. If you have already seen Killing Eve, then I hope I can still surprise you. :)

Whenever people ask, Doyoung tells them that he likes his job. A lot. Really. 

 

The location is excellent, the boardrooms are state of the art, and the coffee is both fresh and laced with twice the amount of caffeine available commercially—Doyoung knows, he checked the label. It’s almost enough to make him forget the cramped floor space, his tiny desk overflowing with documents he’ll never look at, and his computer, which, to his eternal dismay, still runs on Vista.

 

If pressed, he’ll admit there’s a certain glamour working for the National Intelligence Service. The “ooh’s” and “ahh’s” he hears from new acquaintances and occasional first dates do extraordinary things for his ego, and are almost enough to make up for the fact that, despite working for an actual spy agency, his day-to-day has depressing few differences from any other shitty desk job.

 

“You should have been an agent,” Taeil had said to him late one night in a rare moment of roommate bonding. Doyoung had thanked him so profusely that the sheer awkwardness that settled in the aftermath never quite lifted.

 

The point is: Doyoung loves his job. Even when they force him into hour-long meetings over information that would be easier conveyed in a three-line email. Even when they drag him out of bed at the ass crack of dawn on a Saturday morning because threats to national security had no respect for the sanctity of the weekend. Even on the unholy occasion these two hatreds occurred at the same time.

 

“Thank you all for coming in today,” says Department Head Park. He smiles brightly at them—too brightly for someone Doyoung saw shotgun three cans of steels not ten hours ago. “Unfortunately for all of us, turns out people are still murderous bastards on the weekend.”

 

Section Leader Bae blinks blearily at him, wearing an expression that suggests she deeply empathizes.

 

“This is Lee Taeyong, from the main office,” he continues, gesturing to the stranger beside him. “He’ll be delivering the brief from here. Taeyong?”

 

“Thank you and good morning, everyone.” Lee Taeyong says, rising to his feet, the cadence of his voice soft and clear. His dark eyes sweep over the room, sharp and observant, and he seems effortlessly wrapped in an aura of apathetic coolness that Doyoung had long since reached stage five acceptance that he’ll never, ever possess.

 

The lights dim as the projector turns on in the center of the room to show the three-dimensional image of a man laying on asphalt in a large pool of blood. Doyoung immediately leans forward with renewed interest.

 

“Tak Hyuneul, former politician on the National Assembly, who looks like he leveraged his former position as head of the Gender Equality and Family committee into,” Taeyong sighs, “a retirement of sex trafficking and drug distribution. Last night, he was stabbed outside a night club in Nonhyeon-dong. Someone pierced his femoral artery and he bled out in minutes.”

 

“Awesome,” Doyoung breathes without thinking and immediately wants to bite his tongue off. He can feel Department Head Park radiating disapproval without ever having to look up and he just knows retaliation will be swift and brutal. Taeyong, mercifully, continues without acknowledgment.

 

“At the time, he was with his girlfriend, Nam Bohee.” The image of the dead man disperses and reshapes in the figure of a long-haired, heavily made-up woman easily young enough to be the victim’s daughter—no, granddaughter. “She fled the scene last night and police picked her up in Sinsa-dong this morning. We’ll need a protection detail for her until she can be interviewed as a witness. This may take slightly longer than usual due to her, well—”

 

“She needs to detox first.” Department Head Park cuts in smoothly. “I suppose they’ll get her on drug charges after that anyway. Pity.” He zeros in on Doyoung with a vengeance and Doyoung shrinks in his seat. “Kim Doyoung, I’m glad you find this case so fascinating. Thank you for volunteering your time to be the liaison.”

 

“Yes sir,” Doyoung mumbles, resigned. His job description really ran more along the lines of cybersecurity and network monitoring, but that’s never stopped the department head from piling any manner of other miscellaneous work on his plate. Also, if he didn’t mention it before, _Vista_.

 

“If there’s nothing else, you’re all dismissed.” Department Head Park says, all smiles and pleasantries again. “Thank you all.”

 

What did he say? Three-line email.

 

Being the lowest-ranked section leader present who also got chewed out in front of an audience means Doyoung is the last to leave the boardroom despite being closest to the door. In moments like these, he almost envies the one peon under his care for being too low-ranked on the totem pole to have to deal with this bullshit; but then he sees Jeno waiting by his desk holding a bread bag stamped with the logo of the good café from two blocks down the road and immediately feels bad for thinking such uncharitable thoughts.

 

“Morning Doyoungie-boss,” Jeno chirps cheerfully, paper crinkling as he waves the bag at Doyoung. “Got you a croissant.”

 

“You’re a delight.” Doyoung tells him with an almost embarrassing amount of sincerity as he snatches the paper bag greedily. “The only good person. Absolutely essential. Never leave my side.”

 

//

 

Seoul is his favorite city in the world.

 

Johnny would laugh at him if he ever found out. He’d tease Jaehyun for being _sentimental_ or something just as patently untrue. Never mind that he never said Seoul was _the best_ city in the world—he wouldn’t say that because he couldn’t state that with complete factual accuracy (there could be some small town tucked away in America that he liked more)—but on top of that, the quality of favorite is subjective from the start. 

 

Goddamn, Johnny is an asshole. 

 

He should get him back for that. 

 

Luckily, within his favorite city in the world is his apartment, tucked away on the fifth floor of an unassuming low-rise in Itaewon. It’s nowhere near as fancy as some of the hotels he insists on staying in during jobs, but Jaehyun finds he rather likes the more homely quality. There is well-distributed floor space, a clear view of the front door from all rooms of the house, and (somewhat inexplicably, but to his great pleasure) a clawfoot bathtub. 

 

First things first: the music. 

 

A proper murder should always occur under ideal aesthetic circumstances, he thinks, removing the vinyl from its paper sleeve and placing it on the vintage record player he had painstakingly stolen and shipped back from that one pretentious arms dealer in Shanghai. Johnny had expressly forbidden him from listening to music on the job so, Jaehyun thinks with no small amount of giddiness, he would for _this_ very special one. 

 

The soft harp crackles to life with nary a scratch and Jaehyun closes his eyes, immersing himself in the sound and moving his hands to an invisible orchestra. Death strikes the fiddle and so does he, transformed for a moment into a virtuoso on opening night. When the music lifts, so does he, footing it over to his vanity and knocking the lid off his loose powder—the one with the tint—and beating his face to the music until it’s suitably white. 

 

Then, tilting his head back to expose the white column of his neck, Jaehyun draws a long line in sculpting gel that bisects his jugular and waits for it to set before painting over it with the vicious fake blood he’d lifted from a movie set in Busan—not a job, just for fun. The piece is on its third play-through when he finally deems the wound acceptable. From there, it’s a mad rush through the rest of his preparation. Pills spill out on the coffee table. The cheap fake blood he got from a costume shop mixes with water and splashes artfully over the couch cushions and himself. 

 

Theater lost a fine set designer when he went into a career of dispensing death, he decides. And then he says it aloud, because it’s true and deserves to be voiced. 

 

Johnny lets himself in right in the part of the music where Death laments the rise of the sun. It’s timed so, so perfectly that Jaehyun almost cries. He doesn’t, of course. He remains motionless, body splayed on the couch, eyes staring blankly at the ceiling. 

 

“Oh, what the hell. Really?” Johnny appears in corner of his periphery vision, but dedication to the bit means he can’t get a good look at Johnny’s face. It’s okay. He’ll sustain himself by the utterly put-upon tone of Johnny’s voice. “Jaehyun, come on. I can see you breathing.” 

 

But Jaehyun doesn’t respond. Patience. He’s good at that with the proper motivation, and right now, Johnny is wandering closer and closer like the big stupid prey he is. Still, he waits. Waits until Johnny is only an arm’s length away. Waits until he leans in. Waits until he can feel his breath on his—

 

“AAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!”

 

“JESUS!” Johnny shrieks in an impossibly high voice, springing back in a tangle with his long arms flailing. He clutches his heart and sends Jaehyun a look so visibly affronted that Jaehyun dissolves into even harder peals of laughter. “What the _fuck_.” 

 

“I got you!” Jaehyun crows in triumph, jumping to his feet and pointing rudely. “You were scared, weren’t you? Did you think I was dead?” Johnny scowls at him. “Say I got you. C’mon, say it.” 

 

“I knew you weren’t dead.” Johnny snaps, glaring at him like the sore loser he is. Then he sighs. “But yes, you got me. Happy?” 

 

“Very.” Jaehyun smiles beatifically and sits back down on the couch where all the fake blood is coming off in flakes. Johnny makes a face.

 

“What the hell was that for anyway?” 

 

Jaehyun shrugs, the why of it all long forgotten. Hey, if he were expected to keep track of all the reasons why, then he'd never get anything done. Johnny sighs and stares at the ceiling for an entire minute. “You can stare all you want, there’s nothing interesting up there,” Jaehyun tells him. To which Johnny holds a finger up, eyes closed, like he’s counting back from a very high number.

 

Rude.

 

“Anyway.” Johnny says cheerfully, as though the last five minutes had not just happened—which, _extra rude_ for all the effort Jaehyun put into it—“How are you doing? How do you like being back home?” 

 

“Love it.” Jaehyun smiles. “Nice to be home.” 

 

“And how was the job last night?”

 

“It was good.” Jaehyun says. They had asked him to be efficient, and he had. “Quick.”

 

“I heard, good job.” Johnny pulls out a veritable stack of cash out of his coat pocket and Jaehyun whistles in appreciation. “This is for you. They said there’s another one of these if you can finish the next job before Monday.” 

 

“Already?” 

 

“Yes. The payment is already wired.” He pulls out a postcard with the Baiyoke Sky Tower on one side and a code hidden in the serial number on the other. “I hear Bangkok is beautiful this time of year.” 

 

“Bangkok is beautiful all times of the year,” Jaehyun sniffs dismissively, snatching both the card and the cash from Johnny’s hands. “Before Monday? I’ll have it done by tonight.” 

 

//

 

Nam Bohee is sitting in an interrogation room when Doyoung arrives at the police station. Her wrists are tied to the legs of the table with strips of cloth that looks like they were cut from an old t-shirt, and every once in a while, she lets out a moan as she sways unsteadily from side to side. 

 

“She had to be restrained.” Officer Kang explains. “Every time she realizes where she is, she attacks.” 

 

“I see,” Doyoung says, trying valiantly not to stare at the deep scratch on her temple. He sits down on the other side of the table. The Nam Bohee from the still is poised and put-together, whose stance is like someone who knows she’s always being looked at. The Nam Bohee in front of him is a mess. She’s still the same person, but he could hardly tell underneath the smudged makeup and miasma of stale alcohol. “Good afternoon Bohee-sshi. My name is Kim Doyoung, I’m from the NIS. Can you tell me anything you remember from last night?” 

 

She stares at him with unfocused eyes, blinking slowly. Her head flips to the right. “Hm. Fuck. Hah. I saw shit.” Then to the left, snorting, before her voice drops into an unintelligible babble. She laughs again and breaks into a children’s song, with any semblance of lyrics replaced by a string of creatively obscene profanity—some even in English. Doyoung is honestly impressed. 

 

There’s a part of him that thinks she might just be processing grief—actual grief—but about the fifth time she bursts into hysterical laughter apropos of nothing, Doyoung concedes that it might just be the heroin. 

 

“She’s been like this the whole time.” Officer Kang says at last. “I don’t think you’re going to get anything out of her.” 

 

Right then, their patient hiccups so hard she spits up a little over the front of her shirt like an infant. Officer Kang’s mouth twists in disgust. 

 

“Yeah, you’re probably right.” Doyoung sighs. Nam Bohee is now banging her head against the tabletop with enough force to make his phone look like it’s vibrating. “I’ve arranged for transport to take her to the hospital, she’ll be out of here soon.” 

 

“If you don’t mind me asking, do you know when that will be exactly?” Officer Kang asks. “I’ve been here for almost thirty hours. There aren’t any other female officers to watch her.” 

 

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Doyoung says. “If you need to leave, I can stay with her until they arrive.” 

 

It’s a long time before Officer Kang responds. “Please don’t take this the wrong way,” she says, sounding exhausted but determined. “But I won’t leave her alone here.” 

 

“No, no, you’re absolutely right. I apologize.” He glances at his phone and sends Jeno another text, imploring him to pull whatever strings he can to speed things up. “It’ll be soon, I promise.” 

 

The ambulance arrives ten minutes later. After they load her up and send her on her way, Doyoung calls a cab for Officer Kang. Out of his own pocket, of course, because expensing travel is a privilege that only extends to people Department Head Park values—but Doyoung encounters people like her so scarcely in his line of work that it’s almost healing to be able to exercise any form of altruism. 

 

Of course, that means dinner is whatever near-expiration packaged food is on sale at the corner convenience store. Doyoung snags two packs of kimbap and eats it in front of the television as his mind races. 

 

The initial disappointment he’d felt at the witness’s lack of coherency had faded almost immediately when he had realized that lack of evidence didn’t actually hurt his theory—quite the opposite, actually. Of course, she hadn’t seen anything; no one had in any of the other cases and most of them were perfectly sober. 

 

There was the man who had been found hanging in one of the squatting toilet stalls of the Tokyo airport, in one of the busiest terminals in the world. There was the woman who had collapsed in the middle of a political fundraiser due to what everyone thought was a severe nut allergy, whose autopsy later revealed traces of tetrodotoxin and an injection site right under her arm. There was the army officer whose brains were splashed all over the inside of the barracks, but whose cause of death had been determined to be a single bullet through the heart. 

 

All of them killed in highly populated areas, often literally in broad daylight. All of them, without a trace. 

 

Doyoung had started compiling these cases about two months after he started working at the NIS, and he’s added to his portfolio continuously. Now, it numbers in the triple digits. Over time, he had theorized that these were all the works of the same killer, and now he takes it for granted that they are. Oh, there weren’t that many similarities from case to case other than an unbelievable flair in its execution or that sense of poetic justice that tickles at him. 

 

Whoever the killer is, they’re _really_ good. Like, Doyoung isn’t a _fan_ but, like, he appreciates a good murder. 

 

The front door slams shut and Doyoung jumps, startled from his thoughts.

 

“Oh hi.” Taeil says as he toes his shoes off. “I didn’t know you liked Love Tap.”

 

Doyoung follows his line of sight to the television, where an idol group dances adorably on a musical stage. “Um. Yeah, they’re cool.”

 

“I thought I heard you run out this morning, is everything okay?”

 

“Yeah, I got called into work.”

 

“That sucks.” Taeil hums noncommittally as he pours water into a pot to make ramen.

 

“Hey hyung,” Doyoung says, still absorbed in the events of the day. “How would you kill me?”

 

Taeil’s face falls the way it does whenever he feels particularly out of touch with the youth—which is hilarious because Taeil came out of the womb an old man and everyone knows it. “I'm sorry?”

 

“Like, if you were going to murder me and get away with it, what would you do?”

 

“I don’t know.” Taeil says, still looking bewildered. “Push you down some stairs?”

 

“No, no, you’d get caught immediately.” Doyoung flaps his hands. “C’mon, seriously.”

 

“I don't know? I mean, how would you kill me? “

 

“I’d paralyze you with mamba venom and suffocate you in your sleep.” Doyoung says seriously. “Then I’d chop you into tiny little pieces, boil your remains in my mom’s stock pot, blend ‘til smooth and flush you down five different restaurant toilets over the course of a week.”

 

“…wow.” Taeil says faintly. “You really thought about this, huh?”

 

“Yeah.” Doyoung grins. “Smart, right?”

 

“Super smart. What brought this on exactly?”

 

“Huh? Oh, there was this…thing that happened at work. Like a murder thing. Someone stabbed this guy in the leg and he bled out in a minute.”

 

“That’s…cool?”

 

“Super cool.” Doyoung replies earnestly.

 

“Um.” Taeil says carefully. “I hope you find him?”

 

“Thank you, Taeil-hyung.” Doyoung says, truly touched. “You’re a good guy.”

 

//

 

“GOOD MORNING _EVERYONE_.”

 

Jaehyun’s eyes snap open and he’s immediately, horribly awake. His mornings are usually like this, with no transitional state between asleep and alert—it’s a point of pride for him. Of course, the threat in his mind is usually nonexistent, not standing at the foot of his bed with a smile that’s more threatening than friendly. 

 

“Do you think you can excuse your guests?” Johnny asks cheerfully, glaring pointedly at Hot Blond sleeping on his right and Even Hotter Redhead blinking awake slowly on his left. Jaehyun obliges, scowling all the while. It’s not difficult, with Johnny glowering at them like the disapproving anything-from-older-brother-to-jilted-lover role he normally assumes. Even Hotter Redhead even slips him his number “just in case”.

 

Still, Johnny never gets the better of him. It’s _awful_.

 

“How was Thailand?” Johnny asks when the front door is closed and the deadbolt is locked.

 

“Fine. Hot.” Jaehyun says as he drops Even Hotter Redhead’s number into the garbage bin. He had stabbed Paithoon Suntornnitikul in the eye with a hat pin dressed with large pheasant feathers, because subtlety is a stupid art that no one should bother with. “I came back early and celebrated.”

 

“I can see that. Good job.” Johnny holds up the postcard he had given Jaehyun right before the last, with a photo of the Coex Aquariam enclosed in a circle. “Two nights ago, local waste of space and all-around shitbag human Tak Hyuneul was found professionally murdered outside Paradise Lounge—which is great for all of us. The incident occurred in a surveillance blind spot—super great, especially for you. He was with his girlfriend at the time—which, okay. She got picked up by the police—not so fine, for us.” He flicks the postcard on the coffee table. “Now she’s being held as a key witness to Tak Hyuneul’s murder—bad for you. The interview is scheduled for tomorrow—oh, very bad, especially f— ”

 

“So I’ll take care of it.” Jaehyun says, rolling his eyes. Johnny’s sense of drama is honestly Too Much sometimes.

 

“See that you do,” Johnny says, sounding very annoyed. “Make it look like suicide. And keep it tidy, for fucks sake, your fancy hair pin is all over the news in Bangkok.”

 

“Hat pin,” Jaehyun corrects lazily for the sheer pleasure of seeing Johnny’s expression contort into new, ugly shapes.

 

“I mean it.” Johnny says when he’s done exercising his facial muscles. “I’ll never question your skills, but you keep pulling flashy shit like this, you’re going to run into trouble.”

 

“Ugh. Yes, yes, make it look like suicide. Fine.” Jaehyun glares at him. “Can you get out now?”

 

They send her location about an hour later—third floor, private wing. That’s the thing about the target being right in his backyard, Jaehyun has the entire day to sit around mulling over Johnny’s warnings to _be careful_.

 

In the end, infiltrating the hospital is so easy it’s almost insulting. The amount of effort he put in relative to the amount of effort expended immediately puts him in a terrible mood. For a second, he considers killing a male nurse and taking his uniform—but then Johnny’s voice floats through his mind and _fuck that guy, seriously_.

 

He steals a pair of scrubs and a white lab coat from a supply closet, and changes in a bathroom. The night shift starts in an hour. If he hits right after the first round of checkups, he can be out of there early enough to hit up a lounge and see if he can socially engineer someone into giving him money.

 

It’s not stealing, it’s just practice.

 

Jaehyun runs through all the different ways he can make a murder look like a suicide—he’s thinking about doing a variation of the Shanghai job that involves a charcoal pill instead of a vitamin supplement—but every stray thought comes crashing to a halt when he exits the stall to the bizarre sight of a guy scrunching his face in his hands.

 

He’s not particularly handsome. Jaehyun sees particularly handsome every time he happens upon a reflective surface, and this guy isn’t it. His face is long and the ratios are off, but his cheeks are full and his eyes are bright. Jaehyun is left wondering how deep his fingers would sink into that skin, and if the rest of him felt as nice as it looked. The stranger catches his stare in the mirror and turns slowly toward him. His front teeth peek out from beneath a prominent Cupid’s bow, and they pull Jaehyun's eyes in like magnets.

 

“Are you okay?” the stranger asks curiously. His hands fall away from where they gripped at his face and Jaehyun has to actively resist the urge to place his own over the white marks left behind.

 

In an instant, he flips an internal switch and assumes his most placid and bland persona, the one he uses to sneak around office buildings and hide in plain sight. He smiles, nods, and turns back toward the mirror. Feels that rounded curiosity slide off him like a heavy blanket. 

 

(There's a part of him that's disappointed. Jaehyun decides he'll figure out why later.)

 

He waits until the stranger turns back to the mirror before making his move, toeing his way to the door at a brisk but unhurried pace. He can't resist looking back, where the bunny-faced stranger is staring at the mirror like he's giving himself a silent pep talk.

 

He shouldn't—this is the very definition of untidy, but Jaehyun doesn’t resist temptation as a rule and Johnny is so far away right now.

 

“Have a good night,” he says, pressing his voice into a soft and gentle lilt, flattening his tongue so the words sound more like Johnny and his American roots he thinks he does such a good job of hiding. 

 

There's a scalpel in his pocket he had lifted from the poorly guarded surgical room on the second floor. He had kept it on him as a last resort, just in case his backup plan didn't play out. But things changed and he is adaptable.

 

(Once upon a time, he had told Johnny that asphyxiations were his favorite because he liked to watch the life drain of out their eyes—but that had been a lie. The precise and messy ones where they're left with more confusion than fear? Those were the best. Those took _skill_.)

 

Jaehyun would have to work fast. It would be a pity to have to end the man with the bright eyes because of timing, he thinks, even as the animal part of his brain screams, _not him_.

 

God, his heart is beating so fast.

 

The heavy bathroom door finally clicks shut.

 

Like a waltz-- _One two three, one two three._ \--and Jaehyun opens the throat of everyone in that hospital wing.

 

//

 

It’s eerily quiet when Doyoung emerges from the bathroom, an unnatural stillness in the air like the start of a horror movie. Chills crawl up his spine. The phone is ringing but no one is picking up. He ignores the sense of dread, walking around the empty nurse’s station along the corridor to the private room where Nam Bohee is held.

 

The first real sign that something is terribly wrong is the pair of legs sticking out of the doorway. Doyoung recognizes the shoes as standard issue police uniform and his heart leaps into his chest. It’s in that moment that he realizes what that iron stench in air is.

 

The other policeman on guard is lying motionless on the ground next to the window. So is the nurse, propped against the wall, bleeding through the heart of her floral scrubs. And motionless on the bed lays Nam Bohee, with a stricken expression on her face, struggling to speak through the thick of her own blood. 

 

“Oh my god!” Doyoung springs over the dead man in the doorway. “Bohee-sshi, oh my _god_. Oh my god, please stay with me, please please please, oh my _GOD_.” 

 

He tears off his windbreaker and holds it against her throat in a panicked attempt to stem the blood flow, but no matter how hard he presses, the bleeding doesn’t stop, and no matter how loud he shouts for help, no one comes. The dark red liquid runs over his fingers, warm and sticky. Doyoung tears his gaze away in a desperate bid to look at anything else and they lock eyes. For a moment, Doyoung swears she’s sober. Her expression is gripped with terror but there’s a horrible kind of clarity too. She makes a sad, weak little noise, a tear slides down her cheek, and her heart monitor goes flat.

 

Doyoung has no idea how long he stands there, holding the cheap polyester against her wound. When they finally pull him away, the blood on his hands is dry and cracked, his pulse is racing in his ears, and he’s shaking. All of him, shaking. 

 

A kindly middle-aged nurse puts an arm around him and leads him away from the scene. She sits Doyoung in an empty room and gives him a moist towelette to wipe his hands with. He doesn’t know how long he sits there talking with the police, only that at the end of it, there’s a rap on the door and—

 

Oh fuck, not him. Not now.

 

“What I want to know,” Department Head Park says tapping his chin like he’s playing the inquisitive type on a variety show, “is why you were even here tonight.”

 

“I wanted to see if the witness remembered anything.” Doyoung says dully. 

 

“That’s not your job.”

 

“Well, how am I supposed to know that when you _keep changing the perimeters of my fucking job_?” Doyoung snaps, his voice increasing in volume with every word until it ends in a shout.

 

“Do not raise your voice at me.” Department Head Park says, punctuating every word with an open palm strike on the table. It’s supposed to be intimidating, but falls well short. Then again, after what he’s seen tonight, everything probably will for some time.

 

“Fuck you,” Doyoung glares at him. “You’ll get respect from me when you earn it, you dickswab.”

 

He waits for that feeling of immediate regret to hit, but it doesn’t come.

 

“You’re fired.” Department Head Park’s face is ashen under the tungsten light. “You're _fired_.”

 

Doyoung leans back in his chair and shrugs, because he’s worked under Department Head Park for almost two years now, and if he’s learned nothing else, it’s exactly how to set the bastard off.

 

The police come in after Department Head Park leaves in a furious huff and they make Doyoung go over all his statements one last time before telling him he’s free to go. 

 

It doesn’t hit him until he feels the cold night wind biting at his face, and then it feels like a pile of heavy boxes falling on his head. He just got fired without references from a government job he’s not allowed to talk about—not that he had any hopes of actually keeping his job with what a mess this has turned into and everyone eager to point fingers—but _fuck_.

 

Emergency fund or not, Taeil is going to need a new roommate in like six months. Less than that, if their landlady went through with the promised annual rent hike, and she always did.

 

Oh _god_ , he’s going to be homeless.

 

Doyoung’s mind is catastrophizing the worst of how unbelievably fucked his life is when suddenly, he hears a soft ladylike cough from beside him. He turns his head and finds Section Leader Bae standing beside him, looking very grumpy with her designer overcoat thrown over a pair of truly ratty sweats.

 

“Um.” Doyoung says, feeling lightheaded.

 

“I wanted to call him a dickswab,” she sniffs almost petulantly

 

“…what is happening right now?” Doyoung asks, maybe just a touch hysterical. Wordlessly, she hands him a small shopping bag. His spare house keys that keeps in the office are hooked to the handles, and just from a glance, he sees the bobblehead of Son Heungmin he’d won at the office holiday party, the framed photograph of Bongshik that Jeno had given him as a joke, and various other personal effects that meant nothing to anyone but himself. “Oh.” Doyoung says, suddenly emotional. “Thank you.”

 

“They won’t go after you for this.” Section Leader Bae says quietly. “Reports are preliminary, but they’ve determined that the assailant is left-handed. You took suspicion off yourself when you signed your name on the witness statement.”

 

Doyoung doesn’t know what to say to that, so he just nods. Section Leader Bae doesn’t smile at him—Doyoung doesn’t think she smiles at anyone—but her stare lingers like she’s trying to look past the flesh and bone to see what’s underneath.

 

“Good luck.” She says at last.

 

“Thank you,” Doyoung says, meaning it, and bows the full ninety-degrees until her footsteps fade away. Only then does he finally have his bearings together to start the long trudge home.

 

Taeil takes one look at his face and guides him to the couch. He pours Doyoung a cup of the old man tea he had brewing and Doyoung downs the whole thing, bitterness and all.

 

“Do you want to talk about it?” Taeil asks haltingly, like he’s worried Doyoung might actually say yes. But Doyoung thinks he’s talked enough for the night and just shakes his head. Taeil breathes a sigh of relief and mumbles, “oh good.”

 

God, Taeil is the best. Doyoung is going to miss having him as a roommate _so much_.

 

The evening news continues to blare in the background as they sit in silence drinking tea. It’s almost peaceful.

 

“I still don’t want to take about it,” Doyoung says quietly, staring at his hands. “But I was fired from my job today. Like, two hours ago.” 

 

“Oh. That’s not good.” 

 

“I don’t know if…” And all the thoughts he had on the bus ride home—how he doesn’t know how long he could afford rent, how he doesn’t know if he can get another job with his resume being as secretive as it is, how he can’t call anyone for help even if he wanted—all get caught in his throat and, to his horror, his vision blurs with the sting of humiliating tears. 

 

“It’s okay.” Taeil pats his shoulder gently. “Don’t panic. Go get some rest right now, figure it out tomorrow. But shower first. You, uh, have blood underneath your fingernails.” 

 

It startles a laugh out of Doyoung. He scrubs at his eyes with his sleeve, mumbles his thanks, and makes a beeline for the bathroom where he stands under the warm spray until his mind is blissfully blank. He’ll go to sleep now, he decides, and worry about what comes next tomorrow. 

 

Of course, this is one of those nights, so the universe throws a wrench even into that. Taeil is waiting for him when he gets out of the shower, wearing a strange expression on his face. 

 

“The doorbell rang when you were in there, it’s for you.” 

 

“Who?” Doyoung towels at his head and reaches for his glasses. “I’m not expecting anyone right now.” Or ever, and Taeil knows that.

 

“I didn’t ask, but he was really insistent.” Taeil says. He bites his lip like he’s not sure if he should say what he’s about to say. “Really good-looking guy though?” Curiosity piqued, Doyoung trudges toward the front door. He hasn’t had a date in months, he has no idea who it could. 

 

It’s a familiar face, though he can’t place it immediately. Or maybe it’s the leather jacket and combed back hair that’s different. Doyoung stares at the man with his large eyes and sharp jaw—and suddenly it all comes back to him.

 

“Oh, it’s you.” Doyoung says dumbly. “Lee Taeyong, from the main office.” 

 

“Kim Doyoung.” Taeyong inclines his head in greeting. “Do you have a moment?” 

 

Doyoung stares at him. If his brain is an engine, it stopped functioning about ten minutes ago, and trying to get it up and running seems a monumental task in itself. “I don’t know if you know this, but I was fired. Like, just now.” He almost winces at how flat his tone is, but it has been A Night, and any filters existing between his brain and his mouth were gone. Possibly forever. 

 

“I am aware.” Taeyong replies, nodding his head. “Please.”

 

Doyoung goes. Maybe it’s the side of him that’s convinced this night could literally not get any worse, but mostly it’s that quiet but serious earnestness that Lee Taeyong exudes. They walk up the street for about two blocks in silence, Doyoung following behind Taeyong’s purposeful gait growing more confused every step. When they get to the intersection of a busy street that’s crawling with traffic even late at night, Taeyong finally turns to him.

 

“We think he’s been operating for two years across ten countries.” Taeyong says quietly. Doyoung’s jaw drops to the ground. “He’s highly skilled, untraceable, and frankly, he’s starting to show off.”

 

“Holy shit,” Doyoung breathes.

 

The light changes color, the traffic picks up, and their conversation halts as the noise would have drowned it out anyway. Doyoung stares at Taeyong, eyes wide, and Taeyong gazes back raptly—later, Doyoung will realize that it’s the same searching look that Section Leader Bae had given him earlier that night, what feels like an eternity ago. 

 

“When you feel a little better,” Taeyong says when the lights change again, “I’d like to buy you breakfast at Drip Café on 12th and 7th on Thursday at nine in the morning. I’ll wait for ten minutes.”

 

“Yes—” Doyoung starts before the traffic cuts him off again. He waits, staring at Taeyong with wide eyes and renewed interest, and the moment the traffic lets up: “Yes, yes, that’d be great. I’ll be there.” 

 

“Great.” Taeyong smiles, an actual smile, and all the breath escapes from Doyoung’s lungs. Taeil is right, he really is very handsome. “See you then.”

 

He crosses the street at the next light and disappears into the night. Doyoung stands there for a long time, staring after him. His mind went from mindfully-achieved relaxation overclocking like crazy in—he checks his watch—less than five minutes; and that was on top of the insane whiplash this entire evening has been. 

 

_What the fuck is going on?_

t.b.c

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> None of the victims or their crimes have any relation to real people or events. The details were lifted from the show and the names were taken from a random name generator. 
> 
> Somewhere in this is the love story of Section Leader Bae and Officer Kang. If anyone wants to take a crack at it, please feel free. 
> 
> The song Jaehyun listens to is [Danse Macabre](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyknBTm_YyM) by Camille Saint-Saëns, which depicts Death calling forward the dead from their graves to dance for him on Halloween while he plays his fiddle.


	2. I'll Deal With Him Later

When someone does the murder thing as much as he does, they will at some point notice a pattern to how people die. Of course, Jaehyun would never suggest that murder is predictable in any way—it wouldn’t be as fun if it were—but at the end of the day, the human reaction to swiftly-impending death really isn’t all that varied.

 

Like this guy right now. He’s leading him on a merry chase from the seventh to the tenth floor, but Jaehyun already got him in the knee. The adrenaline will keep him going but the fear will make him uncoordinated, so all he has to do is continue at a walking pace, maybe catch him a few times just for the fun of it, and let the target run himself into exhaustion. 

 

That’s why, even though he’s killed in equal measures, he prefers men to women. Women don’t play that game with him, they either give up completely from the start or fight for their lives to the bitter end like cornered animals, rarely anything in between. Men on the other hand, they’ll keep getting up and running, even though they must know they can’t win. Oh, everyone bargains and begs for their lives or act like their riches are truly worth anything, but it’s the chase up to that point that separates the two. It must be an evolution thing. 

 

A large standing printer goes careening into the floor as the target (Hsieh-something. Jinyang? Jiangyang?) knocks it into Jaehyun’s path. The blood loss must be making him stupid, Jaehyun thinks as he steps over the printer without breaking stride. The man is bawling now, great big heaving sobs as he hobbles behind the last row of desks, trapping himself. No survival instincts whatsoever, this one. 

 

“Who are you? What are you doing this?” he’s crying in flat-tongued English, face contorted with pain. “Tell me what this is all about, _please_ , just tell me what you want!!” 

 

Jaehyun slips into the second to last row, sheathing the machete and reaching for his holster, because he may be cocky but he’s not a fool, and he’s not about to wander within grappling distance of a desperate man hopped up on fear and adrenaline. “I would like you to stand still,” Jaehyun says politely as he cocks the gun, and the reaction is so immediate it’s almost Pavlovian. 

 

“No!!” His voice goes high with terror. “Please, I’ll double—no, _triple_ —whatever it is they’re paying you! I’ll give you anything you want, please, _I beg you_!!”

 

And there it is, like clockwork, the bargaining and the promise of riches and _blah blah blah_. How utterly predictable. All of his targets die only once and yet, with only a handful of exceptions, all of them react the exact same way. It must be something about the way humans are wired, he just knows it. 

 

It’s just too bad for them (and conversely, lucky for whomever signs his paychecks) that Jaehyun isn’t swayed by money. Oh, it’s very nice. He has lots of it now, he knows how to enjoy it, and he does so frequently. But if there’s something in the world that money can’t buy, it’s the sheer thrill of being so very _excellent_ at his job. Of course, he doesn’t feel like explaining any of that to a dying man, so in response, Jaehyun lifts his gun and shoots the target through the heart. Twice. 

 

And there it is, the blessed silence. 

 

He doesn’t get to savor this moment often. So often, his instructions are to make it look like an accident, or to be fast, or to be discreet, or most commonly, all of the above as needs must. But this building is not wired for security cameras and Jaehyun is wearing a mask like everyone else in Taipei, so he pulls up a chair and flops into it. Watches. Waits for the target to turn from a man into a corpse. 

 

Hsieh has left the building already, but his body is still struggling, laboring hard to pull in those last few breaths of air, that one last pump of blood. Every bit of him fights as he dies, cell by cell. There’s a moment that film and television never get quite right, right before the death arrives, when all the light drains from their eyes. It’s passes in a split second, like a shooting star, but when you see it—

 

It’s beautiful. 

 

//

 

Drip Café is one of those impossibly trendy European-style coffee houses tucked away in Samcheong-dong. The entrance is slightly below street level and the interior is all warm colors and soft lighting from hanging bulbs and fairy lights. It’s too cluttered to be minimal and too clean to be rustic, but there’s a charm about the place that Doyoung rarely encounters out in the wild. 

 

Taeyong is already there when he arrives, sitting in the corner with his eyes closed, hands tucked into the sleeves of his large (cashmere, Doyoung thinks with envy) sweater. He blends seamlessly in with his surroundings, but doesn’t fade into the background at all. 

 

The _unfairness_ of it all. 

 

“Taeyong-sshi?” 

 

“Doyoung.” Taeyong’s eyes open, fully alert. “Good morning. Please, sit down. Those are for you.” He nods his head toward the latte whose leaf design in the foam remains intact and the plate of pastries that are still warm to the touch. Doyoung had eaten earlier in the day, too nervous to sleep, but he obliges, ripping the Danish into bite-sized portions to stuff inside his mouth. Taeyong sips at his own latte, looking every bit like a magazine foldout come to life. “You were born in Gyeonggi?” 

 

“Hmm? Yes.” Doyoung nods. “Guri.” 

 

“What year?” 

 

“96.” 

 

“Ah, I was born 95.” Taeyong says. His brow furrows. “You can call me hyung, if you’d like.” 

 

“Um.” Doyoung swallows. “Thanks?” 

 

Taeyong’s expression still looks perturbed, like he’s trying to bridge a gap to another topic gracefully, but isn’t quite sure how. Eventually, he gives up. “I’m not good at this kind of thing, so I’ll just be direct,” he says. “You know that when someone in our line of work is…terminated, it’s standard procedure to sweep their computer and hard drives.” 

 

“Oh god,” Doyoung blurts out, immediately trying to think of any and all instances where his browser history were suspect or could be misconstrued. Not much comes up—for one, he’s not dumb enough and for two, Vista. 

 

“They found these in your computer.” Taeyong passes over a leather portfolio that’s definitely not his, and Doyoung’s mind slips into panic mode again. Did someone plant something in his computer? Were they trying to conveniently blame something else on him? The terror persists as he lifts the cover, but he recognizes the contents straightaway and the relief is so immense, he starts giggling. 

 

“Sorry,” he chokes, rubbing his face with both hands. The impact of last week must not have sunk in completely yet, Doyoung hadn’t even thought of his dossier on the mysterious but incredibly competent assassin—probably because he thought he’d never see it again, and hadn’t been ready to grieve the loss quite yet. “Oh my god, I thought—actually I don’t know what I thought you found. Thank you—can I keep this?” 

 

“You compiled that on your own?” Taeyong asks, staring intently at him. “Nobody asked you to do it?” 

 

“Um.” Doyoung blinks. Maybe he’s in trouble after all. “Yes? On my own?” 

 

“Why did you do it?” Taeyong’s gaze bores into him with such intensity that it makes Doyoung sweat and feel guilty all over again for no reason at all. “Why these cases in particular?” 

 

“Um. I-I don’t know.” Doyoung stammers. He never actually planned for anyone else to see it, much less have to explain himself afterward. “They just…stood out to me? I mean, I’m kind of—like—a fan? I just. I like keeping track of murders? Especially when they’re well done? Like, I know I’m in cybersecurity—by the way I never did anything really illegal—at least, I think so. I hope so, oh god. But like, a few years ago, I noticed some of the murders were like, super high quality?” Doyoung winces, knowing exactly how bad it sounds. “And I just—I know, this is a totally crackpot theory, but—” 

 

“Doyoung, please.” Taeyong interrupts quietly. “Speak freely.” 

 

Doyoung turns his face toward the ceiling and closes his eyes, trying desperately to will his last two brain cells into something functional. He’s already lost his job, he decides. If he’s thrown into jail—or an asylum, that’s a possibility too—then at least he’ll have a place to sleep. He makes bold eye contact with renewed will and points to the folder. 

 

“I believe that all these assassinations were carried out by one person,” Doyoung says, determined. “They don’t have a signature, but they have _style_ , and I just found that to be really interesting.” 

 

Taeyong’s perfectly shaped eyebrow rises about half a centimeter, but it’s too late now, Doyoung’s on a roll. 

 

“But no one is looking into it. None of these national agencies speak to one another and all of them are more than happy to write them off as accidental deaths or random acts of violence. I don't know who's behind this guy—or girl—or why they do what they do, but they're getting away with it, and no one cares. Well, I cared. But then I got fired for it, so I guess it's not my job to care anymore. Which. Fine. Whatever. I'm glad they're getting away with it."

 

He downs the rest of his latte, wishing it were something much stronger. Taeyong stares at him for a long time after his outburst, expression inscrutable. Finally, he rises to his feet and asks, in that same quiet voice. 

 

“Can I show you something?” 

 

He leads them out of the coffee shop and down the street, turning into a long, narrow alleyway that smells like sewage and moss. At one point, Doyoung starts entertaining the thought that he’s walking carelessly into his own murder— _for knowing too much_ , his brain whispers traitorously—but quickly dismisses the idea. Something is finally happening and risking a gruesome death seems a small price to pay. 

 

They finally come to a stop in front of nondescript staircase beside a closed storefront. Doyoung stares, murder-vibes intensifying. "There used to be a bread shop here," Taeyong answers without prompting, following Doyoung's gaze and misinterpreting his face. "Don't feel too bad, they weren't very good." 

 

The top of the stairwell is blocked by an old steel gate, which Taeyong unlocks with—honest to god—a palm reader. "I didn't think those existed outside of, like, movies," he says dumbly, following Taeyong through the door. 

 

"They don't," Taeyong replies, shuffling them both inside. "Mark was messing around and he accidentally made one that’s actually secure." Doyoung never gets a chance to respond to that because the lights flicker on to reveal a small, practical office space, with maybe four desks pushed together in one corner and a small kitchenette in the other. 

 

It’s the far wall that captures his attention, a large bulletin board that looks like something from a crime procedural on television. In a moment, Doyoung realizes why it looks familiar—because it’s his portfolio, pinned and strewn out in organized clusters of documents and photographs, with strands of red string connecting them neatly to points on the world map right in the center. 

 

“Holy shit,” Doyoung breathes unsteadily. Nam Bohee is on the wall, both her mugshot and a closeup of wound on her throat that must have been taken during the autopsy. “What is this?” 

 

“If I’m guessing, I’d say it’s your crackpot theory all over my wall.” Taeyong says, crossing his arms. “No traces, no patterns, but most importantly, no one owning up to it—and when the victims are these sorts of people, somebody usually does.” 

 

“It’s like I’m looking at the inside of my brain,” Doyoung mumbles. When he read about the man who was found strangled and stabbed inside an underground car park in Osaka, he had added the file on instinct because, despite the messiness of the crime, there were at least twenty cameras onsite and the killer had evaded all of them. It never sat well with the rational side of his brain and he had wondered for some time afterward if he should take the case out—only to find it sitting in the upper-left corner of the wall. It feels good. Like validation. 

 

“You’re right in that none of the agencies speak to one another on an official capacity. Unofficially, however…” Taeyong nods to the space around him. “You can consider this your _unofficial_ official tap on the shoulder.” 

 

“Wait, are you offering me a job?” Doyoung asks incredulously. Taeyong nods. “But why me?” 

 

“Your research speaks for itself.” Taeyong says, nodding at the leather portfolio Doyoung is still clutching with both hands. “You’re intuitive, you’re driven, and you’ve been fired, so no one would be checking up on you.” A pause. “I didn’t mean it like that. Sorry.” 

 

“No, it’s fine, I understand.” Doyoung says quickly, holding his hand up. “Thank you.” 

 

Taeyong clears his throat, looking abashed. “We can pay your previous compensation, plus expenses,” he continues. “Our budget isn’t limitless, but it is a cooperative and some people are getting very nervous.” 

 

“So…” Doyoung motions at the wall. “You want me to…?” 

 

“Find him.” Taeyong says simply. “He’s on a payroll, even if we don’t know who, and there must be a pattern, even if we haven’t figured it out. But if we find this guy, then it’s a start.” 

 

“I’m in.” Doyoung’s heart is beating out of his chest. “I’m _so_ very in. But—I—this guy? Have you confirmed the assassin to be a man?” 

 

“Hm? Yes, we have confirmation.” Taeyong says. “One of our contacts is flying in tomorrow, he can tell you more about it. I’m not sure where—” 

 

Right on cue, the lock clicks open and a young man rushes through the front door carrying a large bottle of water and an ice cream bar stacked on top of a plastic container that smells like chicken. “Oh my god,” the stranger yelps, turning pink. “Sorry, I just got hungry. I wasn’t skipping.” 

 

“You’re not in school anymore, there’s no skipping,” Taeyong sighs and pinches the skin between his eyes, looking like it’s costing him a great deal not to comment on the other’s dietary decisions at ten-thirty in the morning. “Mark, this is Doyoung, I’m hoping he’ll be joining us. Doyoung, this is Mark. He works the offensive end of cybersecurity and liaises for all of our international contacts. Most of what you see on that wall was assembled by him.” 

 

“Hi.” Mark says to Doyoung, still looking guilty. “Sorry, I didn’t bring you anything.” 

 

“Mark.” Doyoung repeats. “You’re the one who built that palm reader outside?” 

 

“Yeah.” Mark perks up. “I can show you—” 

 

“Later, please.” Taeyong interrupts without malice. “Mark has been compiling information for some time. Now I need people to make sense of it.” 

 

Doyoung blinks at him. “People?” 

 

Taeyong looks around the tiny little space. “Just one more,” he allows. “Maybe two if they’re very small.” 

 

“Perfect.” Doyoung breaks into a wide grin. The solidity of the job offer finally sinks in and now he can’t stop smiling. “Excuse me, I need to make a phone call.” 

 

// 

 

He catches the red eye back from Taiwan and arrives home early in the morning to find his date with his gigantic bathtub foiled by the trespasser sitting on his couch. 

 

“Letting yourself into my apartment and drinking all my red wine doesn’t make you look cool. It’s just rude.” Jaehyun informs him snidely, throwing his bag on the floor and plucking the bottle from the table to drink straight from the lip—it’s his wine, goddammit. 

 

“I’m not trying to look cool.” Johnny insists like the lying liar he is. He looks furious. Or rather, he looks as furious as he can manage with that lazy slinky face of his, so it’s really closer to a pout. “Good job in Taipei, by the way. Maybe you can explain what the hell happened at the hospital before you left.” 

 

Jaehyun savors the mouthful of wine slowly as he considers his answer. “I don’t know what you mean.” 

 

“You were supposed to make it look like a suicide.” 

 

“Didn’t I?” 

 

“What,” Johnny scowls. “She slit her own throat after stabbing two policemen and a nurse?” 

 

“It could happen.” 

 

“With one arm handcuffed to the bed?” 

 

“Still possible,” Jaehyun nods sympathetically. “Meth is a helluva drug.” 

 

“She wasn’t on meth.” Johnny snaps, glaring at him angrily. “Why are you being difficult?” 

 

“I got excited.” Jaehyun grins blissfully and takes another swig. “My job is just _so_ nice.” 

 

“Well, you earned yourself another evaluation.” Johnny rises to his feet, looking disappointed. “I hope it was worth it.” 

 

Evaluations are tedious and boring. They ask idiotic questions they don’t really want to know the answer to and show pictures of things dying they don’t want a reaction for. It goes the same way, all the time—sometimes they don’t even bother switching up the pictures—and it’s the worst. They stick him in one every time he gets even a little creative and it’s just stifling. 

 

“I watched a nature documentary on the flight yesterday,” he answers at one point, just to change things up. Because he’s _bored_. “Did you know that the planet is dying? It’s so sad.” 

 

“How does that make you feel?” the proctor asks. He’s a craggy older man with an enviably thick beard and a fashion sense so bland it’s genuinely beneath Jaehyun’s ability to mock. 

 

“It made me hungry.” Jaehyun replies, smiling sweetly. 

 

Eventually, the old man turns to Johnny and tells him, “he’s fine”, the way they always do, the way they always will. Two hours of his youth: wasted. 

 

“Wait, just one more thing.” Johnny hands the man a sheet of paper and Jaehyun’s fingers sink into the couch. It better not be what he thinks it is. “Ask him about that.” 

 

The proctor glances back at Jaehyun and flips it around to reveal a photorealistic drawing of a pair of eyes, sketched in graphite on thick sketchbook paper. Dark. Curious. Glittering. “Who is this?” 

 

Jaehyun’s exterior doesn’t crack. It doesn’t. He’s too well-trained for that. But his insides turn frothy and ugly. He wants—he wants to clench his fist and swing it, wants to shout “that’s mine” and snatch it out of those wrinkled old hands, wants to—

 

“I saw them in a dream.” He says in an unaffected tone, that same pleasant smile still on his face. It’s best practice to lie as little as possible and this one is so close to the truth that it doesn’t even register. 

 

“Do you dream a lot?” 

 

“Of course.” Jaehyun smiles. “It’s the most effective training ground.” 

 

“Why did you feel the need to draw these eyes?” 

 

Because they were stunning. Because they were the darkest and sharpest pair of eyes he’d ever encountered in his life. When did anyone ever feel the need to justify attraction to attractive things? It’s one of the stupid questions they ask to spark a reaction and he’s furious that it works, like tossing a match onto a puddle of gasoline. 

 

He smothers it, inhales evenly, and gives them the stupid answer they’re looking for. “They were the brightest eyes I’d ever seen.” Jaehyun says wistfully. “I wanted to see the spark go out of them.” 

 

The evaluator turns to Johnny again and repeats. “He’s fine.” 

 

He smiles when they both leave, keeps smiling after the front door closes, after the minute hand of the grandfather clock goes from upright to leaning. 

 

He’ll never forgive Johnny for this.

 

// 

 

Jeno is already waiting outside the subway station when Doyoung arrives and he waves frantically when he catches sight of him. 

 

“I’m not your boss anymore, you don’t have to call me that,” Doyoung says when Jeno finally releases him from his octopus-like grip. “Also, I can’t believe you’re here already, how fast did you quit?” 

 

“Like two minutes after you texted me yesterday—and now I have like the best quitting story ever, so thank you for that.” Jeno smiles sunnily, falling into line as Doyoung leads them out of the station. “Besides, are you kidding me? All you had to do was say Lee Taeyong and I would’ve run straight across the river—that man is a beauty and a legend.” 

 

Doyoung opens his mouth and closes it because this, like most of what Jeno says, is just enough true to not be worth an argument. “Wait, what happened yesterday?” 

 

“So, when I came in on Monday morning and they told me you were fired—thanks for not warning me, by the way—Dickhead Park told me to just sit tight until they decided what to do with me,” Jeno rolls his eyes. “Which is bullshit because I’m amazing and they’ve been asking if I wanted to transfer to anyone else for literally months now, so I knew they were just trying to sweat me.” 

 

“For months?!” Doyoung’s jaw drops, aghast. “I didn’t know that.” 

 

“Unimportant.” Jeno shrugs. “Anyway, so yesterday they called me into a meeting and Dickhead Park said he’d _kindly_ decided I would be working with him now—like he was doing me a _favor_.” 

 

“Oh no.” 

 

“Oh yes.” His grin grows even wider and the curve in the corner of his eyes take on a sudden malicious edge. “Luckily, you texted me like ten minutes before that—which, again, thanks for the great timing—so I got to tell him I would rather cut off my own foot and eat it raw with that one maggot cheese—the one where they jump into your eyeball if you get too close?—than ever fetch him a single cup of coffee.” 

 

“Holy shit,” Doyoung chokes, horrified. 

 

“You should have seen the look on his face,” Jeno says dreamily, looking so tremendously pleased with himself with Doyoung almost can’t bear to reprimand him. “I said some other stuff too, I don’t remember everything, but apparently it was loud enough that Sooyoung could hear it from her desk.” 

 

“Oh my god,” Doyoung drops to the ground and moans into his hand. “That’s so irresponsible, you can’t _do_ that. I didn’t raise you this way.” 

 

“I mean,” Jeno’s smile turns sleazy. “I was just quoting you.” 

 

“Not to their _face_!!” Doyoung complains, knowing exactly how weak his argument is. “Ugh. Fine, maybe I did. Try not to do that here though, I like it here.” 

 

“I would never.” Jeno puts his hand over his heart. “So, this whole task force thing, please tell me it has something to do with your murder folder.” 

 

“Wait, you knew about that?!” 

 

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Jeno says, putting his other hand over his heart. “Was that supposed to be a secret?” 

 

“Shut up,” Doyoung sighs in the face of complete defeat. “Yes, it has something to do with that.” 

 

It takes the rest of their walk to tell Jeno about everything: what happened at the hospital, the immediate aftermath, and the events of the previous day. Jeno is an attentive audience, nodding and making appropriate noises at all the highlights of his story. 

 

“There was a man who was murdered in Bangkok on Saturday night, someone stabbed him in the eye with a feather pin,” Doyoung tells Jeno as they ascend the staircase. “Taeyong said their—our, I guess—associate from Thailand is flying in today to give us more details.” 

 

“Neat.” Jeno says, enraptured. “Oh my god, is that a palm reader?” 

 

Taeyong is already in the office when they arrive, alongside a stranger who Doyoung assumes is their contact from Thailand. The newcomer is shorter than Taeyong, with delicate, well-balanced features and an impeccable sense of dress. When he shakes their hands, he moves with such purpose and precision that Doyoung comfortably takes that mental leap and decides this guy definitely doesn’t work a desk job. 

 

“This is Ten, he works for the NIA in Thailand.” Taeyong says, nodding at both of them. “Ten, this is Doyoung and his associate—” 

 

“I’m Jeno, hi.” Jeno bows and shakes both of their hands enthusiastically, lingering on Taeyong. “Big fan.” 

 

Taeyong blinks. “Thanks.” Doyoung makes a show of offering Jeno his water bottle and Jeno ignores him pointedly. “Normally, we only communicate electronically, but there were some extenuating circumstances this time. Do you want to explain?” 

 

“Of course.” Ten smiles at them and it’s friendly enough, but there’s also an edge that makes both Doyoung and Jeno stand up a bit straighter. “Before we begin, I must emphasize that what I’m about to say cannot leave this room.” 

 

“Nope.” 

 

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” 

 

“Good.” Ten points to a series of photographs already laid out the desk, and they’re gruesome enough that Jeno actually recoils. “This is Paithoon Suntornnitikul, he was a journalist who wrote extensively on environmental issues. On Saturday night, he was stabbed in the eye with a letter opener and then gutted with a blade.” 

 

Doyoung stares at the photographs, captivated. Unlike the clean, efficient wounds he’s used to seeing, this one is intentionally messy, with the innards spilling out in a pile and the eye socket looking—for lack of a better word—dragged through. “Neat,” he mutters under his breath. 

 

“Isn’t it?” Ten smiles, with none of his previous edge, and an invisible weight lifts from Doyoung’s shoulders. “Unfortunately, his body was discovered by his housekeeper, who ran directly to the press because the killer took the murder weapon but left this behind.” 

 

Taeyong holds up an evidence bag containing what looks like a large, deep emerald feather with a quill that’s long and metal, like a blade. 

 

“That’s the letter opener your assassin used to stab his eye,” Ten informs them matter-of-factly. “The feather is from the tail of a fireback and the media took the symbolism and ran with it. Now everyone from the government to major corporations to the royal family are being accused of murdering journalists—it’s a huge mess.” 

 

“Is it possible that any of them did it?” Taeyong asks. 

 

“Oh of course.” Ten says, nodding his head matter-of-factly. “Suntornnitikul was good at his job, he upset a lot of people. It’s a shame that his death has been turned into such a spectacle. They can’t even investigate because too many people want the story buried. Tomorrow, law enforcement will release a statement saying that it’s a home invasion gone terribly wrong, and that’ll be the end of it.”

 

“Is that why you came in person?” Taeyong asks, nodding his head at the stacks of paper and hard drives strewn across the table. 

 

“They were going to get rid of everything anyway,” Ten shrugs, cheerful again. “I helped.” 

 

“Is that…” Jeno flounders uncertainly, caught off guard by all the pairs of eyes suddenly trained on him. Doyoung knows where that question is trending because he’s thinking the same thing. He knows their search for this specific assassin has a greater purpose of finding out who (or what) stands behind him, but up until that point, Doyoung hadn’t really given too much though to who or what that could be. The idea that they could be going up against national governments or multinational entities—or worse, any one entity—who have such varied targets and such a large reach… 

 

“I’ll be right back,” Doyoung blurts out and makes a beeline for the bathroom out in the hall, slamming the door behind him and locking both the handle and the deadbolt. 

 

It’s an old habit conceived from a childhood of well-meaning but overbearing parents, where more often than not, the only true privacy he had was when he locked himself in a washroom. Doyoung stares at himself in the mirror, expecting all the weight from the meeting to be etched in his face, but other than the hideous lighting making his skin look flaxen, he looks about the same as he had that morning. 

 

He runs the faucet and splashes water in his face. Every time his mind reaches for the larger narrative of the mysterious organization, it runs into a brick wall of the young woman who died in his hands. If her geriatric, sex-trafficking boyfriend was murdered because he pissed off the wrong people, then Nam Bohee was murdered as part of the cleanup, and existential crisis aside, that’s just sad. 

 

Doyoung imagines dying as part of someone else’s cleanup process and sighs deeply, pressing his face into his hands and tightening his grip as he runs it up and down, like he’s trying to wring the stress out of his brain. His mirror image stares back at him, brow furrowed, and blinks as a memory returns to him from out of the haziness of that night. 

 

“—palm reader?” Jeno is saying when Doyoung returns. Mark has arrived in his absence and looks to be in the middle of an lively conversation. Taeyong makes eye contact with him over his protégé’s shoulder, wearing an expression of concern. Doyoung something fiddly with his eyebrows he hopes conveys that, yes, Jeno is actually kind of being sarcastic, but no, he’s not cruel and he won’t be mean in the face of Mark’s earnest enthusiasm. 

 

“You’re our new expert on that assassin we’re hunting?” 

 

Doyoung startles as Ten appears noiselessly at his elbow, drinking an iced coffee from a logo-stamped plastic cup. 

 

“Yes,” he replies automatically. “I mean, I’m not really an expert.” 

 

Ten snorts. “I’ve seen your portfolio,” he says kindly. “You’re definitely the closest thing we have, so feel free to act like it.” 

 

“Oh.” Something inside Doyoung uncurls. “Thank you.” 

 

Ten smiles serenely at him before handing him a sheet of photo paper. “For you.” 

 

Doyoung flips it over and sees a sepia-toned screen capture from low-resolution security camera, with the time and date stamped in the corner identifying it as footage from April almost three years ago. The image is the upper profile of a man dressed in black with a hood drawn over his head and a scarf pulled over his face. 

 

“This was captured on the security camera of a nearby convenience store last Saturday—the shopkeeper never configured the time, that’s why the date’s off,” Ten tells him. “The full footage is somewhere in that pile, but this is the best image we could get. He was in a residential area and we didn’t have time to investigate further before we were shut down, so this is the only footage we have. Now, I’m not allowed to pursue this line of investigation, but I feel comfortable in saying, that’s your man.” 

 

“I see,” Doyoung says, even though he doesn’t. The figure is dressed in dark clothing so shapeless, it’s near impossible to discern height, body shape, or anything else identifiable. “Oh!” he says, when he realizes that’s the point. 

 

“You got it.” Ten winks and claps him on the shoulder amiably. “Good luck.” 

 

Doyoung pins the image to the board, right underneath the world map, and stares at it, trying to imagine what the face of the man would look like. The quality is really too low for anything concrete, but if he could take off the large hoodie and loose sweatpants to see what lies underneath…

 

“Hey Mark,” Doyoung says, barging ungracefully into the middle of their increasingly animated conversation. “Can you get me the photo ID’s of every male who works at Seoul Medical, including temporary workers and rotational staff?” 

 

“Did you think of something?” Jeno asks excitedly, the affront at being interrupted smoothed over by potential new dirt. 

 

“Yes, there was a man—a young doctor—I saw in the bathroom right before the killing started. He was around my height, anywhere from around eighteen to thirty, and I think he might’ve been foreigner.” 

 

“Yeah that’s not a problem.” Mark says. He gestures to the stack of storage drives Ten had left behind. “I’ll get that for you right after…” 

 

“Great, thank you.” Doyoung heaves a sigh of relief. They’d only just began but somehow, he feels like he’s taken a big step forward. 

 

//

 

Two days. 

 

They sit him for _two days_. 

 

Whenever it comes up in conversation, Jaehyun tells people that he’s a day trader, currencies and futures and such. Part of the reason is because their eyes will always glaze over without fail whenever he starts in and the deception makes him gleeful, but more than that, he’s just really damn good at it. 

 

He makes an obscene amount of money on the first day and trashes all his gains the next out of sheer, furious spite. He runs, he lifts, and he punches a sandbag until it ruptures. He hangs out in a local coffee shop and talks people into revealing security questions to their bank accounts. He goes to a candy shop and walks out his pockets stuffed full with merchandise and doesn’t get even half a suspicious glance. He walks into a bar and walks out with a fistful of numbers he never intends to call. 

 

The entirety of the second day, he spends lying on the couch and glaring at the door. Without the allure of a job waiting on the horizon for him to hone these skills for, none of it is appealing to do; like chewing on something with texture but no flavor. 

 

The lock finally turns early that evening, when the last of the sun has disappeared from the sky, and the white noise in his ear turns down as all his focus, now finally with a purpose, narrows to a point. 

 

“Enjoy your vacation?” Johnny asks, regarding the upside-down stare of him, sprawled all over the cushions like a large cat. Jaehyun smiles—even professionals would have a hard time seeing that it doesn’t quite reach his eyes if he is flipped over like this—and scoots his feet so the space next to him clears invitingly. 

 

“You have no idea.” 

 

“You have another job.” Johnny says, sitting down in the empty space like a big stupid fool who’s not learned anything and handing him a postcard with a painting of a fish dangling on the end of a line. “I know we’ve went over this already, but it bears repeating: be as discreet as possible.” 

 

His concentration crashes for one split second, his ears ringing with the sound of his own blood rushing through his ears, before he contains himself. “He said I was fine.” 

 

“I know he did.” 

 

Jaehyun leans closer, draping his arm over the back of the couch. “Then why did you leave me alone for two days?” 

 

Johnny shrugs. “There’s other things going on.” 

 

“What other things.” 

 

“There are always other things going on.” Johnny says patiently. “You just have to trust me—” 

 

“No, you—” Jaehyun’s hands close around the handle of the small switch he had jabbed into the couch last night in a fit of boredom, and in a second, presses the sharp edge against the underside of Johnny’s chin. Johnny counters instinctively but his height advantage negated the moment he sat down. “—have to trust _me_. Answer me, what other things.” 

 

“Jaehyun—” 

 

“Think carefully.” Jaehyun interrupts. Johnny is using that placating tone and he’s not in the mood. “I could kill you right now and they would just send me another one. Do you think I should take that chance? Maybe I should, maybe the next one will not dig through my shit.”

 

“You mean that drawing you left out in the open for anyone to see?” Johnny asks, very bravely for someone teetering the line between a close shave and a mortal wound. “Have you considered that the next one might be even more nosy than me? Maybe they’ll have even less scruples about putting their fingers where they don’t belong.” 

 

“Maybe I cut them off.” Jaehyun snaps. “Maybe I kill them too.” 

 

Johnny takes a deep, calming breath and—he’s gambling, Jaehyun knows it—looks him in the eye and smiles his friendliest smile. “Just because you have the most fun, doesn’t mean you’re the best on the roster. You know that, don’t you?” 

 

Oh, he knows he’s being played, but it’s _such_ a ballsy gamble. He can almost respect that. Nevertheless. Jaehyun’s lips curve and he allows Johnny to see exactly how little it reaches his eyes. “Last time,” he says softly. “What other stuff.” 

 

“If I tell you,” Johnny finally says, knowing that even this much is as good as surrender, “you have to promise me that you won’t do anything with this information. Not yet, anyway.” 

 

“Tell me.” Jaehyun says. He considers throwing a ‘please’ in there somewhere, but Johnny is already so close to breaking, it would be a waste. 

 

“There’s a task force that’s been created specifically to find you, and they’ve brought someone in who might know too much—no, that’s not good,” Johnny says, tone going sharp at the end. “It’s a closed operation, so we don’t know what they know. For now, we’re going forward with the assumption that they can’t actually confirm you and make plans to keep it that way. So you have to stop misbehaving.” 

 

Jaehyun considers him carefully before finally lowering the knife. Johnny only lies through omission, once you get him talking, he sings like a bird. Who is he kidding, breaking in another handler would just be too much work; but while he’s got Johnny talking, he might as well go all the way. 

 

“What’s their name?” he asks casually. 

 

Johnny’s face goes wary. “Why?” 

 

“You kept me waiting for two days.” Jaehyun reminds him pleasantly. The switch is still unsheathed in his hand and he adjusts his grip demonstratively. “I almost died from boredom, you know. You owe me.” 

 

“Don’t be reckless.” 

 

“Of course.” 

 

“His name is Kim Doyoung.” Johnny relents with a sigh. Jaehyun repeats the name, testing it slowly on his tongue. It tastes ordinary. “He’s not a threat, for now. Maintain your focus and don’t give them a reason to suspect you exist.” 

 

“Absolutely.” Jaehyun smiles, crinkling the corner of his eyes so it looks more trustworthy. “Is that everything?” 

 

He doesn’t even wait for the door to close completely before he dives for his laptop—the one he uses for his fake day job he happens to be really good at—and opens up all the search engines he can think of to search for Kim Doyoung. Naver comes up empty, so does Google, and even Daum. Jaehyun scowls fiercely at the screen, wishing he had spent his two days learning how to gather information like a civilian. 

 

It’s not until he has the idea to try searching under archives and caches that he finally strikes gold in the form of an old Cyworld page belonging to KDY_JM. Most of the information had been scrubbed and there isn’t even a profile picture, but Jaehyun persists, click after click, until he finally stumbles upon a selca post whose external links are still active. 

 

The photo must be at least ten years old, taken in the days before cameras automatically filtered out the yellow tones in the skin, and yet Jaehyun immediately recognizes him—the long face, the Cupid’s bow lips, the bright reflective eyes. 

 

 _Are you okay?_

 

Kim Doyoung. 

 

This time, the smile that spreads across his face is real without any additional effort.

 

// 

 

Less than three kilometers away, the photographs of the male staff of Seoul Medical start to repeat and Doyoung comes to an epiphany of his own. He reaches for his phone and sends a text.

 

**To: Lee Taeyong**  
_I think I’ve met him._

t.b.c.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will update the tags with every chapter, please tell me if I missed one. :)


	3. Don't I Know You?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note the change in rating.

“He was really attractive. Like, in the conventional way too, but that wasn’t what—” Doyoung screws his eyes shut, trying to see through the haze of his memories. “He was around my age, my height, my build—but more up and down in the torso, I think? Um, his hair was ash brown and he had fair skin…” 

 

The shape of the man stands out so clearly in his mind, but the image of his face slips through like sand. Maybe he’d have a chance in a lineup, but left on his own, he had very little. 

 

“He had a very…kind face?” Doyoung flounders. “Like, gentle features. I remember thinking how lucky his patients were for him to be their doctor. He had a soft look and a warm, easy smile. He was definitely the first love type, like someone you could bring home to your parents.” 

 

But, he thinks, if this is the assassin they’re looking for, then his initial impression has to be completely incorrect. He tries to imagine that kindly face with the internal switch set to kill—how it would come alive: the sharpening of the jaw, the narrowing of the gaze, the mouth twisting into something…

 

“Wow, boss.” Jeno says weakly. 

 

Doyoung blinks, realizes he’s touching his own lips, and lowers his hand hastily. Jeno is staring at him in disbelief and Mark is staring determinedly ahead at the digital face sketching program, fingers clenched tightly around his mouse. 

 

“So, is that like a square face or an oval face?” 

 

// 

 

Sometimes, Jaehyun wonders what it’s like to exist with too much money and not enough purpose. Not often of course, because he’s not one of those unlucky fucks; but every once in a while, when he catches yet another target in a net of their own vice, the thought emerges like a gopher from its hole, demanding to be addressed. 

 

“Good evening and welcome, ladies and gentlemen,” he says, bowing from the waist with his most charming smile. “Thank you for being here tonight. As you all know, the game is no-limit Hold’em poker. Five communal cards, two in the hole, and a 10-million buy-in.” 

 

He had spent six weeks in Montenegro training to be a dealer on another job and two years later, it still paid dividends. 

 

The target sits on his right, holding a glass of wine at the base of the bowl and drinking until the rim touched his nose like a plebian. It’s such a shame Johnny went out of his way to make him promise to be discreet this time, because otherwise he would really have made this one special—for his own aesthetic and for the eyes he now knew were watching him. 

 

Maybe in the next one, he wouldn’t be restricted to poisons and secrecy. Maybe in the next one he’d have the leeway to really paint the walls red, do something he can really be proud of. 

 

Oh well, Kim Doyoung will still see this one. Jaehyun has made sure of it. 

 

// 

 

Two weeks ago, Doyoung would have told people he loved his job without ever realizing it was the Stockholm syndrome speaking. Now, with no more pointless meetings or office politics to play—other than Jeno walking in on Day Two and presenting him with glitter-framed photograph of his new cat that Doyoung is forced to put up beside the first—work almost doesn’t even feel like work anymore. 

 

He gets to spend eight hours a day poring over what had, up until that point, been a secret passion project, but now he has access to full casefiles and original notes from the investigation that never made its way into the NIS database. Not only that, Mark got updates almost every other day, it’s like following a sport with a regular schedule. The assassin’s level of output is so high, Doyoung is honestly in awe. 

 

The coffee does kind of suck, but like, he’ll take the hit. 

 

“Good morning,” he calls out cheerfully as he crosses the threshold, with Jeno following two steps behind. Mark is already there, which is normal, but so is Taeyong, which is less normal. They return the greeting with much less enthusiasm, which isn’t unusual, but Doyoung is learning to read their different moods of blank indifference and this one is…mildly alarming. 

 

“We have some news,” Taeyong says, clearing his throat. “There’s been another kill.” 

 

“Oh yeah, Hsieh Jinyan, the guy killed in New Taipei? I sent out a memo about that…” he glances around the room at two apprehensive faces and Jeno, who just looks confused. “…no?” 

 

“This one is a fellow named Zhangfei,” Mark says, pulling up a photograph of a large man with a buzz cut and three sad hairs on his chin. “He was a colonel in the Chinese military—research and development—who had kind of a gambling problem. He went to Japan about once or twice a month for underground poker tournaments. Last night, at one of these venues, he went outside for a smoke and that’s where they found him. Cause of death is still unconfirmed, but he was most likely poisoned.” 

 

“Oh, that _is_ new.” Doyoung rubs his hands eagerly. “Were there any witnesses?” 

 

Mark shakes his head. “They all scattered really fast—illegal tournament and all that—but, ah…” he stumbles and looks toward Taeyong for help. 

 

“The establishment has been extremely uncooperative with investigators—not that it would help much, since all the guests use aliases and cash,” Taeyong says, brows furrowing like he’s considering his next words carefully. “But they did give us the name of the agency contracted to provide dealers. Out of that list, there’s one name that’s… obvious.” 

 

“That’s great!” Doyoung’s excitement dims a bit when neither one of them react. “Isn’t it?” 

 

“The dealer who serviced the victim’s table is currently unaccounted for,” Taeyong says. “The name he signed in with is Kim Doyoung.” 

 

The bottom of his stomach drops out as the proverbial rug is yanked out from under him. His hands and feet get that tingly feeling and his vision blurs for a second as he steadies himself, achingly conscious. Someone is saying “oh my god, oh shit” over and over again—it’s him, he realizes belatedly—and then he feels Jeno shoving a chair underneath him as Mark pushes a cup of water into his hands. Both of them look petrified. 

 

“Do you smoke?” Taeyong asks, hovering uncertainly beside them. When Doyoung finds it in himself to shake his head, he sighs. “Neither do I. Now would be a good time to start.” 

 

The absurdity of the statement, combined with the awkward way Taeyong shuffles his feet, startles a laugh out of Doyoung. After that, he can breathe again. 

 

“Please don’t take me off the team,” Doyoung pleads immediately. The initial distress had drained away quickly in the face of a whole new threat. The thought of being removed from the team for—of all things—his own _safety_ is completely unbearable. Taeyong considers him evenly. 

 

“I can’t take you off a team that doesn’t exist,” he says at last, folding his hands across his chest. “I don’t know how he found out—we’re completely off the books, so unless someone told—” 

 

“I didn’t!” Jeno blurts out indignantly. 

 

“I’m not saying you did,” Taeyong says, putting his hands up placatingly. “It could be a massive coincidence, but I think we should be prepared if it isn’t. I’ll leave it up to you to decide what you want to do.” 

 

“I…I want to go see it.” The words come out of their own accord and it takes Doyoung’s brain a moment to catch up—but it’s true and he should say it. He sits up straighter with newfound determination. “The crime scene, I mean. I want to see it in person. If he used my name, then maybe there’s something meant for me, maybe…” he shrugs. “I don’t know. Maybe I’ll see something.” 

 

“Alright.” Taeyong says, nodding his head slowly. If Doyoung didn’t know any better, he’d say Taeyong looks strangely pleased by his response. “We have a contact in CIRO. I can reach out to him and ask him to let you in on the investigation. We can have you on a flight out of here by noon, if you’re available.” 

 

“What—oh my god, yes. Absolutely.” Doyoung jumps to his feet. “I’ll go home and pack right now.” 

 

“Um.” Jeno calls out after him, sounding mildly concerned. “Is that a good idea?” 

 

“It’ll be fine,” Doyoung tells him reassuringly, already halfway to the door. “He’s always on the move and this one happened like twelve hours ago. It’s not like he’ll still be there.” 

 

// 

 

“What are you still doing here?”

 

Jaehyun swivels around in one motion—an impressive feat considering that the computer chair generously provided by the hotel was almost certainly manufactured for the ass of a ten-year-old—and scowls at his uninvited guest. 

 

“I knew I smelled something,” he sniffs, wafting a persnickety hand in front of his wrinkled nose. “What are _you_ doing here? Don’t you have small children to terrorize, or something?” 

 

“Nope, just you.” Johnny scowls back and crosses his arms. “Don’t avoid my question. I only booked you for one night.” 

 

“So what? I like Osaka.” Jaehyun protests, making his eyes go very wide. “Did you know they have a restaurant here where you can catch your own fish?” 

 

“Yes, I told—”

 

“There’s a Universal Studio here too,” Jaehyun continues uncaringly. “Did you know you can get sorted into Hogwarts there? I got put into Slytherin, which is bullshit because I should totally be in the house with all the dark wizards.” 

 

“What.” Johnny’s face scrunches up so hideously it adds ten years to Jaehyun’s life. “Slytherin _is_ —” 

 

“And it’s cherry blossom season too.” Jaehyun plows on. “Have you ever seen Osaka during cherry blossom season?”

 

“Jaehyun—” 

 

“It symbolizes the beauty and fragility of life, Johnny.” Jaehyun says solemnly. “It’s massively poignant.” 

 

Johnny’s eyes shutter close and he takes a deep breath, counting down from ten in his head so loudly that Jaehyun can hear it. “Are you finished?” he asks at zero. Jaehyun plasters a big cheery smile on his face and bobs his head up and down. “Good, because I have another job for you. It’s another last minute one—” Jaehyun frowns. If he went through all this trouble only to waylaid by some last minute fuckery “—right here in Osaka.” 

 

The happiness returns tenfold. 

 

“So, what you’re saying is—” 

 

“No.” 

 

“—I was _right_ to stay.” Jaehyun crows triumphantly, clapping his hands. “Yes, you’re welcome. Very welcome.” 

 

“ _NO._ ” Johnny holds up one finger threateningly. He’s had enough, Jaehyun decides, and takes pity on him. When Johnny appears absolutely certain that nothing else is forthcoming, he lowers that hand into his pocket and pulls out a postcard with a cartoon Maneki-neko. “This is your target. You have to finish the job before the markets close in London, so that would be half-past midnight here.” 

 

“Cake.” 

 

“Good.” Johnny leans against the doorframe casually, which honestly should have been the first warning sign. “Oh, and did you know? Your agent is coming here to Osaka, to investigate your work.” Jaehyun hadn’t, in fact. He had hoped, of course, but he knew just little enough that the tiny bit of surprise that bleeds into his face is enough to fool Johnny. “Why does he think this was you?” 

 

“I don’t know,” Jaehyun replies. Fuck, he’s blinking too rapidly. 

 

“You know your ears turn red when you lie.” 

 

“No, they fucking don’t.” He scowls and resists the urge to hide them from view. Traitors. 

 

“Whatever.” Johnny shakes his head. “I don’t even know what you could be hiding, but hey. Seriously. Stay away from him.” 

 

“You got it, chief.” Jaehyun salutes. It’s only a little sarcastic. 

 

There’s a net café across the street from the gambling den that smells like feet but sells suspiciously amazing spicy pork. When Johnny finally leaves him alone, Jaehyun makes his way to the second floor of that net café and bullies the prior occupant out of the only capsule with a street view. 

 

On the ground level, the detectives are only just arriving, standing out in stark contrast to the forensics team who are still in their crime scene plastics. Jaehyun makes himself comfortable, settling down with a glass of water and a small plate of slightly less amazing but still delicious not-spicy pork. 

 

And waits. 

 

//

 

Doyoung’s flight touches down at Kansai International a little past two in the afternoon and Taeyong’s contact is waiting for him right outside customs, waving a tablet with KIM DOYOUNG typed across in large English letters. Nakamoto Yuta is nothing at all what Doyoung expects, with his wide toothy smile and big friendly energy. 

 

“It’s so nice to meet you!” Yuta says enthusiastically in unexpectedly fluent Korean—which honestly, is a huge relief seeing as Doyoung’s Japanese is not so much unpolished as it is completely nonexistent. “I’ve heard so much about you.” 

 

“Have you really?” Doyoung asks as he follows Yuta out of the airport. 

 

“Yes, but also not really,” Yuta amends easily. “Mark is super impressed with you, but he’s used to hanging around boring high-achievers, so his standards probably aren’t that high.” 

 

“Uh,” Doyoung blinks. It hadn’t occurred to him that Taeyong and Mark were actually friends. “Thanks?” 

 

“No problem!” Yuta winks and shoots him a thumbs up. He leads them through the airport parking garage to a dark blue four-door. They drive toward the city and Doyoung finds out that Nakamoto Yuta is the head of a one-man department specializing in digital forensics, which would explain how he gets away with wearing such trendy clothing to work. 

 

Inevitably, the dam of questions inside Doyoung overflows and in lieu of finding a graceful transition, he ends up blurting out at the first opportunity: “Have there been any updates to the case since this morning?” 

 

Yuta actually laughs. “I was wondering when you were going to ask,” he says cheerfully, not in the least bit offended. “There hasn’t been much. Toxicology confirmed that cause of death is inhalation of a nerve agent, though they’re still running tests to determine which one. We’re heading to the crime scene right now, you’ll see.” 

 

“That’s great, thanks.” Doyoung fiddles with his phone. The view is gorgeous this time of the year, but he can hardly pay attention with all the events of the day weighing on his mind. “What can you tell me about the dealer with my name?” 

 

“Very little, unfortunately.” Yuta replies, almost apologetically. “Everyone scattered before the police arrived—guests and employees alike—so there are no eyewitnesses and no security cameras anywhere on the block. The proprietor was eventually talked into giving us the dealers in exchange for immunity—” 

 

“Of course,” Doyoung mutters.

 

“—but that company operates out of Macau and all of their workers are contractors. Any records they do keep are probably inaccurate as well.” Yuta glances at Doyoung out of the corner of his eye. “Why do you think he used your name?” 

 

Doyoung’s shoulders rise and he shifts uneasily in his seat. That’s the big question, isn’t it? He had seen it in Taeyong’s face when he agreed to send him to Japan and he had asked himself the same question the entire flight over. Maybe it’s just a coincidence after all. Maybe the organization behind him is far better connected than they originally thought. Maybe this same organization considered _Doyoung_ a threat for some reason and intended this as a warning—which is a thought so unsettling Doyoung had promptly refused to think about it any further. 

 

(He had even entertained the notion that this was a personal message, like a proverbial gauntlet being thrown as his feet. Doyoung thinks he likes this idea the most, however unlikely it is.) 

 

“I don’t know,” he says at last, “but I’m going to find out.” 

 

When Yuta finally pulls up, it’s not in front of the seedy alleyway of Doyoung’s imagination, but right at the edge of a large business center with well-trimmed foliage and a row of Victorian lampposts wrapping all the way around the perimeter. Right now, the road is blocked off by police cars, but with normal foot traffic, this place would look quaint and unremarkable. 

 

“Don’t look so surprised,” Yuta laughs, leading him up the walkway. “It’s big money they’re spending here, so it’s going to look nice, yes?” 

 

“Of course,” Doyoung says, feeling silly. “I don’t know why I thought any different.” 

 

The foyer and stairwell are low-lit and industrial, but the light at the end of the tunnel reveals a small, luxurious space that looks like something out of a movie set: deep red walls, polished wooden floors, and a large chandelier hanging from the ceiling. There are three tables with chips and cards still scattered haphazardly on the green, and the chairs are pushed around in similar disarray. 

 

“The victim sat there,” Yuta tells him, motioning at the table closest to the door, pointing to the spot on the far right of the dealer. Doyoung follows him and, with a deep breath, steps into the spot where He would have stood. It’s a small table, with only enough space for maybe four people instead of the normal ten—probably to maximize playing time. The victim would only have been an arm’s length away, the variety of methods available were almost infinite. 

 

Yuta clears his throat and Doyoung blinks at him, shaken out of his thoughts. “Do you want me to leave you alone?” he teases, and Doyoung feels his face go red. 

 

“I’m fine,” he says quickly, dragging his hand down his face and hoping that the lighting could hide the rest. “Sorry, I was just thinking.” 

 

“Anything useful?” When Doyoung shakes his head, he beckons him toward the back. “Maybe you’ll think of something here.” 

 

While the interior is European in its opulence, the garden is decidedly local. A small pond sits in the center with an arch bridge hanging over it, connecting the walkway to a small structure with a pagoda roof. All the empty spaces in between—the rocks, the flowers, the shrubbery—are laid out in such an aesthetically pleasing way that Doyoung actually feels calmer just for seeing it. 

 

Very picturesque for a spot where people went to smoke during breaks between illegal poker games. 

 

“The victim had a full pack on him,” Yuta tells him. “Most likely, the one he smoked was passed over by hand, and the toxins were in the cigarette. They’ve taken the smoke receptacle for analysis, but knowing how thorough your guy is, any evidence has probably burned away.” 

 

Any skepticism Doyoung may have had regarding the assassin’s involvement went the way of the poisoned cigarette. Charming the victim into accepting a smoke in a locale where people actively avoided looking at one another is the kind of extra thought that separated his killer from the rest. Inhalation toxins, especially in that amount, takes time to work to full effect, and done anywhere else, the victim might have been saved. The ambulance wasn’t called until the early hours of the morning, so who knew how long the victim laid there, dying. 

 

“…oh that’s weird,” Yuta says. Doyoung glances up to see Yuta staring at his phone, looking perturbed. 

 

“What’s weird?” 

 

“The Chinese embassy has ordered a second autopsy.” 

 

“A second autopsy? Why?” Doyoung asks, confused. “Did toxicology come back yet?” 

 

Yuta shakes his head. “I guess they aren’t happy with the results of the first,” he says, rubbing his chin. 

 

“Why—” 

 

“Your flight back isn’t until tomorrow morning, right?” Yuta interrupts. “What are you doing for dinner tonight?” 

 

“Um.” Doyoung says, confused by the sudden turn. 

 

“I know someone who definitely knows what’s going on.” Yuta says with a pointed smile. “Dinner tonight?” 

 

“Oh. _Oh!_ ” Doyoung perks up. “Yeah, definitely!” 

 

“Great!” Yuta says, leading him back up the stairwell. “I’ll drop you off at your hotel, you can get settled—maybe do some sight-seeing or whatever—and I’ll pick you up at seven.” 

 

“Yeah that sounds perfect,” Doyoung says gratefully. “Thank you!” 

 

It’s a promising plan and Doyoung is so excited by the prospect of finally getting answers that it almost doesn’t phase him when they arrive at the hotel and he discovers that his luggage is missing. 

 

Almost. 

 

“I’m so sorry,” Yuta says as they stare at the empty trunk of his car, sounding genuinely distressed. “The doors were locked, I don’t understand.” He shakes his head. “I will replace everything, of course.” 

 

“Oh no, it’s not your fault, you don’t have to.” Doyoung reassures him quickly. He hadn’t brought anything irreplaceable so it’s more inconvenient than anything else, and he tells Yuta so. 

 

It boggles his mind though. Why would somebody go through the trouble of stealing his overnight bag? 

 

// 

 

Jaehyun is humming along to yet another blandly cheerful four-chord pop song when he drops Kim Doyoung’s travel bag onto his bed, fingers twitching with anticipation. He had looked captivating in the sunlight, every line of him restless and drawn taut. It was a good look on him, Jaehyun thinks as he drags the zipper open. Truly, worth every effort. 

 

A dark blue jean jacket sits on top, folded in a bundle and stuffed hastily inside. It’s well worn and soft to the touch, the smell of new denim long since dissipated from the material. He slips it on, testing the give of the shoulders and the length of the sleeves—it’s a near perfect fit, and envelops him in a deeply evocative fragrance, like a peach without the sweetness, grounded by layers of skin and musk. 

 

It pleases him tremendously, both Kim Doyoung’s lack of perfume and that he smelled intoxicating underneath it all. 

 

His choice of clothing, on the other hand, leaves much to be desired. Jaehyun sighs when he pulls out the slacks—boring and basic—and actually groans in pain when he shakes out the shirts—boring and basic, with the added offense of being a terrible fit. Kim Doyoung must have been a size 40 on the dot, he had no business leaving home with two 44’s. 

 

The innerwear is a nice surprise, a much higher quality cotton with no holes or pilling anywhere. Kim Doyoung is a low-rise boxer brief kind of person, Jaehyun discovers with elation, and that excitement only intensifies as he strips down to nothing and slides them over his bare skin. It’s an excellent fit, snug around the legs and tight around the waist. He dips one finger beneath the elastic, testing the give and finding little. 

 

That would explain so much. Kim Doyoung doesn’t only need smaller sized clothing; he needs a tailor and two darts sewn in the back—a service Jaehyun could happily provide, give a few days for the basics and a week or two for the full shop experience. He envisions Kim Doyoung in the mirror, arms held straight out, unknowingly—or knowingly, perhaps—allowing all manner of sharp implements and measuring tapes near him. 

 

The thought sends a spike of arousal through his blood, so intense it makes him shiver. He grips himself through the fabric, willing his racing pulse to slow. There’s still work to be done.

 

His wallet and house keys aren’t in the bag, which is a shame, not that Kim Doyoung’s house in—a glance at the luggage tag—Yongsan should pose any difficulty. He tosses out all the wires and chargers, pausing for a second to be charmed by the Yeopki Tokki sticker stuck to the side of a power bank. The small bag of toiletries gets a similar treatment the moment he realizes Kim Doyoung probably uses hotel lotions on his face—but it’s okay, not everyone can be perfect. 

 

Jaehyun glances up periodically to check his laptop for the GPS tracker he’d stuck on the underside of the Japanese companion’s car. It had started moving, but slowly. He does one last perfunctory check, just to make sure he’s gotten everything, and that’s when it falls out: a small notebook, the size and thickness of a passport. 

 

The first page is a sketch of a person he immediately recognizes as himself, but mirrored. Kim Doyoung had left the face blank, but drawn the shape of him with startling accuracy. Jaehyun traces the diagram lines to the left where points on the drawing is connected to comments like _brown hair. v nice. soft_ and _dimples_ and _v. good skin, definitely genetic :(_. 

 

His handwriting is small and neat with a lot of space in between words. It’s cute. He’s cute. 

 

Jaehyun smiles at _idk scrubs / coat_ and _maybe usa but prob faking (?)_ , but laughs outright when he gets down to _HANDS_ , underlined three times, followed by _carved by ~~Bernini~~ ~~Michelangelo~~ Bernini_. 

 

Delighted, he turns the page to find two charts, one titled _money (oblig)_ and the other _~artistic~_. Under each of them is a list of cities and a description of the job he had done in that city. Jaehyun goes through each bullet point, enthralled by the accuracy—all the efficient ones on the right and all the creative ones on the page opposite. He had never seen his work categorized in such a way.

 

To be clear, Jaehyun is intensely familiar with flattery, both in its utility as a weapon and as a long-suffering recipient—and yet nothing has ever made his face go hot with such violent intensity. 

 

It’s _thrilling_. 

 

The page after that is the last one in the notebook to have any writing in it, and it’s simply titled: _top 10_. Jaehyun stares at the words, ignoring the ping on his laptop as the GPS tracker logs a stop lasting longer than three minutes. What he wouldn’t give to have this page completely filled out, to know exactly which methods touched Kim Doyoung’s heart.

 

His laptop pings again with more urgency and he snarls at it half-heartedly, rising to his feet and setting the notebook down. The real Kim Doyoung still awaits, he reminds himself, and the main course is yet to come. 

 

//

 

“Daaaaamn.” Yuta lowers his sunglasses and sweeps his eyes up and down with exaggerated admiration. “You clean up nice, Doyoung-sshi.” 

 

“Stop doing that.” Doyoung replies automatically, feeling his entire body burn under the scrutiny and tamping down hard on the urge to tug his shirt loose and pull at his clothing. “But thanks.” 

 

“I mean it, you look great.” Yuta assures him, tone suddenly kind. “Not as good as Sicheng—that’s Winwin to you—will, but don’t feel too bad about that. His beauty is excessive. I wouldn’t have thought you to be the type to go for florals, but you really pull it off.” 

 

“Uh, thank you.” Doyoung stammers. 

 

In truth, he had felt so comically out of place in the high-end boutiques he’d wandered into that afternoon that when he found the full set hanging outside his changing room after yet another unsatisfactory fitting, he just mostly felt grateful to whichever store employee took pity on him. The fact that the items not only fit but also complimented his body in a way that made him suddenly and depressingly aware of how the rest of his wardrobe really didn’t, meant that Doyoung had been more than willing to overlook the pattern and color. 

 

“Who are we meeting tonight?” Doyoung asks, following Yuta out of the lobby to the row of cabs outside of the hotel. 

 

“Sicheng, my cute little baby,” Yuta says, almost in a coo as his face goes all foolish and loving. “He’s the softest little nerd, the absolute light of my life.” 

 

“Uh…” Doyoung quickly schools his features into something he hopes looks less judgmental. “Alright then.” 

 

Whatever his face is doing must still be lingering because Yuta glances at him and bursts into laughter. “Sorry, I keep forgetting how new you are at all this,” he says in his normal voice, grinning widely. “The attaché from the Chinese embassy who formally requested a new autopsy? That’s his day job.” 

 

“Oh.” 

 

“I met him at my day job and recruited him with my charisma.” Yuta continues, after giving directions to the driver in loud, cheerful Japanese. “He’s here with me most of the time, but most of the communication from our main contact in Beijing come through him. All that other stuff I said?” His smile widens. “Maybe you’ll get it when you see him.” 

 

The driver takes them on a short drive through the city center, to the north end of local park. The building is unassuming on the outside but beautifully ornate on the inside: light woods, white walls, and a flurry of white flowers suspended from the ceiling illuminated with strings of soft white light. Yuta greets the hostess with familiarity and she leads them up the stairs into a private room, where someone is already there waiting for them. 

 

“You’re late,” he says without looking up from his book. 

 

“Sorry, it’s all my fault!!” Yuta beams and all but throws himself across the room to engulf the other in a tender embrace that’s sparingly returned. Sicheng-but-Winwin-to-you doesn’t look particularly adorable or endearing. There’s a certain allure to his face in the curve of his lips and the line of his brow, but for the most part he’s inscrutable. 

 

“Hello,” Doyoung says in terrible, terrible Japanese. “My name is Kim Doyoung, it’s nice to meet you.” 

 

“Good evening,” the other replies in equally terrible Korean. “Their codename for me is Winwin. I don’t know why. But since we’re both here, I’m Dong Sicheng. You can call me either.” 

 

There’s a knock on the door before they even sit down. A young waiter enters with a deep bow and wheels in a large cart behind him. He unloads the whole thing—six large plates of beautifully arranged food along with two bottles of wine and a large pitcher of water—before handing them a small call button and seeing himself out. There is a small audio jammer blinking in the center of the table and the waiter had looked right past it. Winwin starts to speak as soon as they sit down, this time in Chinese, and Yuta translates for him in between pauses. 

 

“The results of the second autopsy came back,” Yuta says casually as he lifts the lid of the pot and steam comes pouring out. “They determined that the cause of death is a heart attack.” 

 

“No way.” Doyoung interrupts irately. “That might be a side effect, but definitely not the cause.” 

 

Winwin shrugs. “I didn’t make the call,” Yuta says. “I’m just telling you what’s going on the official report.” 

 

“But it’s wrong.”

 

“Zhangfei wasn’t high-ranked, but he was popular enough,” Yuta says. “The gambling thing would have been a surprise and reflected badly on him, so now he died of a massive heart attack about five kilometers away from the gambling house.” Doyoung scowls and shoves a piece of meat (wagyu with a burdock rock puree) into his mouth, and is almost chagrined at how delicious it is despite his sudden misery. “If it makes you feel any better, our main guy in Beijing says their government definitely didn’t order the hit.” 

 

“Maybe so,” Doyoung concedes unhappily. “But declaring a false result means intentional or not, they’ve covered up a blatant assassination by the operative I’m—we’re—looking for. And this same operative, by the way, _used my name_. So. Who knows if he’s looking back at us?” 

 

Winwin doesn’t answer for a moment. When Doyoung glances his way, he finds Winwin’s gaze focused on him with an intensity that immediately makes him feel unbalanced. When he finally speaks, his tone is different. Gentler. 

 

“He says he’s sorry about that,” Yuta pipes up. Then, after a long pause. “Last week, Zhangfei hacked into the account of an intelligence agent. He was already being investigated. They found out through his bank statements that an organization has been paying him millions—we don’t know what for—but less than a week later, both him and that agent are dead. They can’t take it any further on their end…” 

 

Winwin digs through his pocket and produces a small silver flash drive, and holds it out to Doyoung. “If we have a leak, you might too.” He says. “Give to Mark, he’ll find out.” 

 

“I will,” Doyoung says, a little stunned. He drops the drive into his inner coat pocket and zips it close. “Thank you.” 

 

Whatever strange tension dispels after that and the conversation settles into something more comfortable. Yuta plays his role as translator with aplomb and, halfway through the story of how they’d met, Winwin reaches into the middle of the table and turns the jammer off. 

 

“It was love at first sight. Animal magnetism.” Yuta says conspiratorially in a stage whisper. Doyoung had known Yuta was a friendly person from the moment they met, but seeing him half-plastered to Winwin’s side with adoration leaking from every pore is still a little jarring to see.

 

“He lies,” Winwin says flatly even as he leans into the attention like a lazy cat. 

 

By the time they leave the restaurant, Yuta and Winwin have completely forfeited any pretense of platonic professionalism and are leaning heavily against one another, mildly inebriated and seemingly very pleased about it. 

 

“Another!” Yuta bellows and bursts into giggles as Winwin somehow manages to look both exasperated and incredibly fond. 

 

“Not for me,” Doyoung replies, waving off their protests. Truthfully, it isn’t that late and he isn’t that tired—in fact he feels himself sobering quickly in the cool spring air—but they didn’t need to know that. On top of it all, it really has been a long day. “You guys enjoy, but I have an early flight tomorrow.” 

 

“You’re full of shit,” Yuta tells him cheerfully with a jaunty wink and a wave of his hand. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Doyoung-sshi, have a good night.” 

 

“It was nice meeting you,” Winwin calls back even as they tug each other away in the guise of being too drunk to stand. Doyoung stares after them, marveling at how their strange dynamic somehow makes complete sense. In the opposite direction, there’s the sound and crowd of an Osaka night market, and Doyoung heads in that direction, intending to walk off the food before hailing a cab and returning to the hotel. 

 

When he looks back at this night, Doyoung will remember this as the instant everything started going off the rails, but he doesn’t know that yet. What happens is this: he’s standing at the corner waiting to cross when he glances across the street and makes sudden, startling eye contact with someone on the other side. 

 

It’s hard to explain. Nothing happens, not like in television and films that pause to give these moments gravitas, no change in the wind or shift in the air. A less than half a second look and Doyoung’s brain lights itself on fire to make him pay attention. When the light changes, he crosses on the diagonal and merges with the swell of people entering the main market, keeping the figure in his periphery. 

 

His original idea, if he even had one, is to follow at a safe distance (whatever that is), but with the sheer volume of people, it’s all he can do to keep the stranger in his sights. The man doesn’t linger at any of the stalls, somehow managing to find space in the crowd to go forward at a leisurely stroll as though he were walking on an empty street—meanwhile, Doyoung can barely keep him in sight much less try to keep pace. 

 

He must be going crazy. Maybe it’s the wine. Maybe it’s the night market lighting that dyes everything in a saturated orange-gold. He has no clue what he’s doing—he’s not remotely trained for pursuing a suspect—and he doesn’t even know why his lizard brain insists on _this_ person. The further he goes, the more his thoughts turn to despair—it had been dark. He hadn’t gotten a good look. At best, he’s stalking a completely innocent person and at worst…well, it could be Him. 

 

That would be the worst, right? 

 

He should turn around. He should just leave and go back to the hotel. Nothing good can come from this–but no matter how much he tries to talk himself out, his feet carry him forward as though compelled by an invisible force. 

 

The stranger pauses at a stoplight and turns slightly, and that’s when Doyoung sees it. 

 

About a year ago, he had caught the sleeve of his jacket on a door handle and tore a gash in the forearm. It had been too large of a wound to close, so Doyoung had gotten a slightly darker piece of denim and patched the sleeve himself—poorly, of course, but Taeil had kindly insisted that it gave the clothing character. His jacket had been with the rest of his stolen luggage. That’s what he had seen: the slightly darker color peeking out under a triangular tear. 

 

The stranger is wearing his stolen jacket. 

 

Doyoung spurs onward with new determination. There’s something going on and maybe it’s all connected or maybe it’s not, but he won’t find out unless he keeps going. 

 

The crowd between them thins the further Doyoung trails him down the street, the huge bustling stalls and stores giving way to smaller stands and tables. The stranger turns down into a small dark alleyway and—Doyoung will only fully appreciate how dangerous it could have been in hindsight, but in the present—he follows right around the corner to find a long, empty alleyway that leads to a dead end. 

 

There’s loud music and sounds of life coming from ahead and he treads cautiously toward the neon lights of a booming night club. He races toward the front door, not even noticing the line until stopped by the bouncer right at the foot of the steps. “Um.” Doyoung says, shuffling awkwardly through his limited vocabulary and coming up empty. He also realizes that he doesn’t have an official badge, or any kind of identification, or really any jurisdiction at all. 

 

The bouncer looks him up and down, like he’s appraising meat in a marketplace. Then, to Doyoung’s astonishment, he nods approvingly and unhooks the velvet rope to wave him through. 

 

He enters the doorway into a long, narrow corridor whose walls are illuminated a bright, fire engine red that pulses the bass so low that he actually feels his heartbeat slow down to sync with it. The music crescendos as he walks down the hallway, drowned in the unforgiving red light, from a low beat to a deafening roar as it opens to a veritable sea of people gyrating under the neon glow of blacklights. 

 

It catches him off-guard in a terrible way, the sights and sounds and sheer density of bodies he’s suddenly surrounded by. He can’t form conscious thought around the dance beat blaring in his ears and the neon lights dancing in his eyes. It feels like the air is crawling out of his lungs, like every nerve ending in his body is contracting. He wants to jump out of his skin. He wants to cover his eyes and his ears but he has two hands and he can’t move them. 

 

He stumbles up a nearby stairwell, increasing his breathing from four to eight counts, opening and closing his hands until he regains feeling in his fingertips. If the room starts spinning or the walls start folding in, it’s game over. Well. It’s already game over, probably. The stranger should be long gone by now. Even if he’d stuck around, there are just too many people and it’s damn near impossible to identify anyone under this lighting—Doyoung probably couldn’t identify him even if they were standing right next to each other. 

 

He staggers into the nearest washroom and heaves a great big sigh of relief at the reprieve the dim lighting provides. The music is still blasting through on speakers inside of the bathroom, but now it’s just normal loud and not rattle-you-out-of-your-skin loud. Doyoung splashes his face with water, scrubbing at his face and ears until the tingly feeling recedes. His expression stares back at him, tired and colorless. 

 

It’s fine. Maybe he made a mistake somewhere, but it’s not like he trained for something like this. In the end, if the only thing he wasted is time (and maybe some old clothes), then that’s not too bad. 

 

Doyoung pauses in the lounge area before he heads out, taking deep breaths until he tunes out the music enough that his pulse finally lowers within its normal range. He peers at the floor length mirror one last time before he goes—and the music turns right back up to deafening, because standing in the doorway of the lounge is—

 

That silhouette. The broad shoulders and straight torso. He’s seen that face before, but not like this—cut like stone with eyes like flint, lips curved into something that’s not cruel, but...

 

He’s wearing Doyoung’s jacket. 

 

Oh god. 

 

//

 

The concept of the chase is not new to him by any stretch of the imagination, but the feeling that accompanies this one is completely unfamiliar and thrilling for it. For one thing, he normally plays the part of the pursuer and for another, if the roles ever reverse, he wouldn’t want to get caught. Probably.

 

Well, Kim Doyoung ended up on the other side in the end. It’s a good look on him: the wide eyes, the slack mouth, the way his body language spells surrender without him ever having to say a word. His lips move, overrun by the music blasting through the walls and Jaehyun sees _are you going to …?_ and descends upon him slowly, shaking his head, breathing out a _shhhh_ that neither of them can hear. 

 

He sees recognition and resignation, but surprisingly little fear. Kim Doyoung’s eyes dart all over him but he returns to eye contact every time, like he can’t look away for long, and it makes something twist inside Jaehyun, a low, hot flush of pleasure. 

 

 _What do you see now?_ Jaehyun wants to ask. Kim Doyoung had compiled his life’s work into a hastily written notebook like an afterthought—because he must have known it well enough that it became an afterthought—and Jaehyun wants to know why. How. The entire process. Everything. 

 

Kim Doyoung’s lips curl around _why are you…_

 

Jaehyun reaches out and bops him on the nose. 

 

Kim Doyoung blinks rapidly, nearly going cross-eyed trying to follow his movements, and forgets himself for a moment, looking so completely offended that it brings a genuine smile of delight to Jaehyun’s face. Kim Doyoung’s eyes follow the movement and he’s still staring at Jaehyun’s lips when Jaehyun reaches out and absentmindedly traces the top button of his shirt, right in the base of his neck. 

 

The silver embroidery against the royal blue of the jacket is truly a work of art; he would have kept it for himself if not for the greater good. If an afternoon of shadowing has yielded anything, it’s that Kim Doyoung is mostly incapable of dressing himself; which Jaehyun really shouldn’t find charming as it is. He traces down the lapel, head cocked, and flicks his eyes up to see—

 

Oh. Well then. 

 

Jaehyun recognizes that look, the cloudy eyes, the parted lips. Usually, the sight of that would signify the end of his objective, thus the end of his interest—but today it feels different. Like a beginning. Like gasoline dousing his insides, waiting for a spark. 

 

His hand trails up deliberately toward that top button again, and watching carefully for any reaction, Jaehyun slides his thumb underneath the button and pushes it loose. Kim Doyoung’s eyes flutter and he lets out a low moan that Jaehyun feels in the breath between them. One by one, he draws his hand down, and Kim Doyoung’s body reveals itself: a broad chest, smooth skin, and a soft, flat belly. He walks his fingers up the expanse of skin, up the hollow of his neck to his lips where Kim Doyoung’s breath is coming hard and fast. 

 

They’ve barely done anything and Kim Doyoung is already coming apart at the seams. Jaehyun runs his hands down his sides that taper to the small little waist he had hypothesized. God, he’s good at this. His fingers don’t quite touch around them, but it’s a near thing. The touch against his waistband is intended as an open question but then Jaehyun’s palm dips lower and Kim Doyoung pushes against it and—

 

He’s aroused. 

 

Kim Doyoung reaches out and touches his face gently, like he wants to draw him closer and Jaehyun’s ears go hot. Suddenly, it’s as though he’s the one stripped and laid bare between the two of them. It’s not like he forgot the nature of this encounter at any point of it, but it hadn’t occurred to him in this way–that Kim Doyoung would know everything about him, and still want to kiss him. 

 

It’s exhilarating. 

 

It’s perfect. 

 

_Perfect._

 

He closes the space between them in one smooth motion, shoving Kim Doyoung against the wall and sucking his pouty, well-shaped bottom lip into his mouth as he draws him deftly out of those nice, tight trousers. His lips have the sour aftertaste of red wine but Jaehyun chases after it, the pounding of the music suddenly amplified by the pounding in his chest. 

 

There’s fire in his veins and a rush of violence running in the same tracks. He wants to break Kim Doyoung out of that unextraordinary shell and expose his insides to the sun: the things the hides from the world, the things he doesn’t even know he’s hiding—the things Jaehyun now knows exists because Kim Doyoung can’t _know_ him and _want_ him otherwise. He wants to open him up and crawl inside of him and fall asleep in that familiar landscape, and most of all, he wants Kim Doyoung to want the same thing. 

 

He pulls back so he can watch Kim Doyoung spill into his hand, making a mess on his belly, on the floor. His lips are bitten red and slick with spit, and his eyes are stunned underneath the glazed-over, post-orgasmic haze. Jaehyun can’t take his eyes off him, how his chest heaves with every breath he takes. 

 

He wants to turn him around and push him into the mirror. He wants to yank the loosened waistband all the way to the floor and make him coat the mirror with his release, again and again, until he’s wailing over the beat. He wants Kim Doyoung to find him in the reflection and tremulously plead for more. 

 

But it’s almost midnight, and duty calls. 

 

He puts Kim Doyoung’s shirt—the egregiously boring one he had repurposed into a handkerchief tied around his wrist-- to good use, wiping him down and tidying him up. Kim Doyoung’s expression becomes more and more confused, but he remains motionless and pliant as Jaehyun buttons him up, tucks him back in, and straightens his jacket so he’s perfect again. 

 

 _Gotta run,_ he says regretfully, knowing he won’t be heard. _Sorry baby._


	4. Hello Sweetheart

Airport terminals are liminal spaces by nature, and never has that feeling of transience weighed so heavily on Doyoung’s mind. All around him is a calm, gray morning light and the soft ambience of weekday travelers still blinding sleep from their eyes. An intercom switches on, followed by the sound of a woman’s voice, cheerful and crisp, asking for the final boarding group for a flight to London in three different languages, all in that same pleasant cadence.

 

Doyoung can hardly hear it over the sound of his rapidly beating heart.

 

“You look like shit.” Yuta had told him sunnily that morning when he arrived to take Doyoung to the airport, looking so chipper that Doyoung had felt a rush of irrational resentment rip through his stomach—which promptly disappeared when Yuta presented him with a small gray travel backpack, “to replace the one that was stolen”.

 

“Oh, you don’t have to,” Doyoung had said, immediately feeling awful for every unkind though that had raced through his head just seconds ago.

 

Yuta had brushed his protests away nonchalantly. “It’s an extra that was just laying around,” he had said earnestly. “Please take it.” Doyoung had done just that, and then tried his best to linger on the guilt he felt for not protesting more, so he didn’t have to think of…the other thing.

 

God.

 

His first reaction had been fear, of course, but indignation had swiftly followed—the _injustice_ of dying in a dirty, smoke-filled nightclub toilet when he rarely frequented clubs in the first place, meanwhile a habitual gambler got a Zen garden underneath a starry night sky—and the outrage was winning out until he made the mistake of looking up and then both feelings were gone, replaced by…

 

 _The rest is a blur._ Doyoung remembers nothing else, not the soft ruffle of his hair, nor the sharp line of his jaw, and especially not that way he had looked at Doyoung as he advanced, low and desirous, as though Doyoung were a complicated puzzle box he didn't want to solve so much as he wanted to break apart at the hinges and pry open at the seams.

 

Doyoung had been ready for it in the completely fatalistic sense, making that marvelous leap to acceptance in a way he should probably find concerning—and then he had kissed him.

 

He blinks and he’s back in the airport, with a flush on his face and sweat under his collar. There’s heat in his lower belly crawling slowly downward and he feels himself leaning into it, feels himself stiffen against the front of his jeans, the really uncomfortable slow-rise that makes him feel like he’ll go out of his skin if he allows it to linger.

 

Any amount of shame quickly loses against baser human desires. Doyoung gathers his belongings and rises to his feet, draping his jacket strategically over his arm, and heads toward the men’s room on the far end of the terminal. It’s blessedly empty, just as he’d hoped, and Doyoung enters the stall furthest from the door, fumbling with his belt before he even locks the door.

 

He had kissed him, captured his lips and stole the air out of his lungs with a sense of entitlement whose mere memory makes Doyoung almost dizzy with need. He had reached out with those artisan hands and Doyoung chases the ghosts of those sensations, all over his sides, his chest, the way they seized around his hips. His other hand closes into a first and Doyoung thrusts into it with a sharp gasp—the spit lubrication inadequate, but aching in a way that’s grounding and perfect.

 

It doesn’t feel right. His hands are too smooth, too familiar. His fingers had been long and tapered, the skin of his palms rough and sturdy. He had stroked him right at the head, gentle and teasing, in sharp contrast to the ferocity of his kiss, and Doyoung moans silently at the memory, spreading his legs—not quite right, but too far gone to care.

 

There had been a steady stream of drunken clubgoers stumbling through the door, wandering toward the stalls, some of them shuffling so close, they must have known, they must have seen. Doyoung hadn’t cared. He doesn’t think he would have cared even if the lighting had been more revealing, even if they had stopped and stared, even if he had been turned around and put on display like—

 

He would’ve—

 

Doyoung draws a shuddering breath, tipping his head back. His ass clenches, aching for fingers or better, but he denies himself relief, driving that frustration until it collides with the rapidly rising crest—God, if he had turned them around, half-stripped like he was, and drove into him from behind so the world could see, Doyoung would’ve—

 

His body seizes in a silent scream, back arching, and Doyoung pulls at himself frantically as his hips stutter to a halt, spilling onto the floor until he’s empty, until he’s less than empty, until it hurts.

 

Fuck.

 

_Fuck._

 

He feels wrong-footed. Strange. Like the Earth had shifted off axis.

 

(He had smiled and it gentled his entire face. Doyoung had wanted to reach out and hold that expression in his hand. Then he had kissed Doyoung on the nose affectionately and—honestly, Doyoung really hadn’t planned on being alive long enough to have to deal with any of this, so having to try now is just massively inconvenient.)

 

The normalcy that greets him when Doyoung finally emerges from the dim light of the men’s room is almost disorienting. No one spares him a second glance and when he catches sight of himself in a mirrored wall panel, he looks…the same. Regular. Like what had felt like a lifetime in another dimension was just five minutes to everyone else.

 

But that’s the thing Doyoung understands about liminal spaces too: it’s not the world that’s changed. It’s him.

 

//

 

He had first laid eyes on it in the back of a dusty Los Angeles electronics store, sitting with all the other big items: a speaker system the size of a small suitcase with an antiquated wooden finish and enough modernity for Bluetooth support. The owner had refused to part with it for even a dollar less than the listed price, even after half-an-hour’s labor bonding over how much Seoul had changed in the last decade. In the end, Jaehyun had forked over the exorbitant fee and they parted with a firm handshake.

 

To be fair, it had been worth the effort, as well as the cost of transport. The bass is deep enough to drown in, the sound quality is the audio equivalent of cashmere, and best of all, at full volume, the waves produced could probably shatter glass. Not that Jaehyun has tried, because his eardrums are a valuable commodity, but that’s not the point.

 

Today, the volume is set a notch above midpoint, loud enough to permeate the walls of his apartment but not loud enough for the whiny recluse on the third floor to file another noise complaint. The target is Johnny, he reminds himself. The goal is plausible deniability.

 

He starts the music the moment he hears the elevator _ting_ in the hallway. By the time Johnny opens the door, the low opening notes have disappeared into the first verse, as have any chance Johnny had of making himself heard, and Jaehyun dives gleefully into the chorus—the lip movement, the dancing, and the ill-fitting white suit. Shoulder pads and all. Even the gloves. Especially the gloves.

 

It’s in moments like these that Jaehyun truly appreciates how expressive Johnny’s face is, really showcases how colossally stupid his pissed-off expression looks.

 

“What the hell?!” Johnny yells over the layers of late 90’s American pop music as he steps over the flood of balloons between him and the doorway. “What the…JAE—” and the rest is drowned out.

 

H-A-P-P-Y-B-I-R-T-H-D-A-Y, Jaehyun signs, spelling out each letter in American sign language to the tune of _all you people, can’t you see, can’t you see_. Johnny shakes his head, a great thundercloud of a scowl descending on his face as he stomps over to the amplifier like a big angry giraffe. The music dies abruptly, leaving behind only a faint tingling in the pit of their eardrums.

 

“What are you doing?” Johnny asks as he whirls back around, sounding as though he would really rather not know.

 

“Something nice.” Jaehyun says with a sweet, unassuming smile. “I thought I would play for you a song of your people. I even updated the dance routine—which, you’re welcome.”

 

“It’s not my birthday.” Johnny says, after a long, weary pause.

 

“Then tell me—”

 

“Secondly,” Johnny interrupts rudely, sounding as though he knew he would regret whatever came next out of his mouth. “I’m really more of an NSYNC guy.”

 

 _HA_. He knew that accent hadn’t come from nowhere. He knew Johnny had grown up in America. The sign language was just the foam art on top of a delicious latte. He _knew_ it.

 

“What does it mean to be larger than life?” Jaehyun asks seriously. “Is that a rude thing to say?”

 

Johnny turns his gaze up at the ceiling, takes a deep breath, and shakes his head. “This is nice.” He says after a very long pause. He gestures to the streamers, the balloons, the hastily wrapped presents, and the truly impressive three-tiered cake. “Did you do all this out of the goodness of your heart or because you knew I would be angry?”

 

 _Damn._. Kim Doyoung’s beautiful, glazed-over eyes appear in his mind and Jaehyun bats the memory away.

 

“Why would you be angry?”

 

“You didn’t fulfill your brief last night.”

 

“Excuse me?” A sudden burst of fury courses through his blood and Jaehyun discards the paper-thin defensive stance he’d assumed. He says coldly, “I sliced his throat at 12:30 in the morning, on the dot. I made sure of it.”

 

“That wasn’t the brief,” Johnny retorts, crossing his arms. “I said to stop him before the markets closed, _before_. That’s three strikes, Jaehyun.”

 

“Repeat that.” Jaehyun mirrors the motion, the vinyl of the suit crinkling as he draws himself up. “What was the second?”

 

“What is your name?” Johnny asks, checking his nails obnoxiously.

 

Jaehyun tucks his hands behind his back and leans forward just so, a stunning imitation. “Johnny Lee,” he says coolly. A frown—Jaehyun tries again. “Johnny Park.” Johnny reaches out and knocks the white fedora off his head and Jaehyun snatches it before it hits the ground, making an affronted noise. “It’s _Jaehyun_ ,” he snaps. “You dick.”

 

“Are you sure?” Johnny tilts forward. “Are you sure it’s not…Kim Doyoung?”

 

Oh shit.

 

“Did you think I wouldn’t find out?” Johnny continues. This is becoming less and less fun by the second. “I told you not to draw attention to yourself and you plaster his name all over the first job you get like an attention-seeking child. So now, I don’t think I can trust you anymore.”

 

Oh, right. He did that too.

 

“Did you trust me at any point?” Jaehyun asks, drowning his voice with soft sincerity.

 

“No.” Johnny says shortly. Which, _ouch_. Oh well. “And since you can’t play alone, you’ll play with your little brothers,” he says, pulling out a postcard with a painting of an old Buddhist temple camouflaged in a forest with red and gold leaves. “Your next job—this will tell you where to meet them.”

 

His fingers twitch, like he wants to pat Jaehyun on the arm to take away the sting of his words, but Johnny must change his mind because he just nods and shuffles his feet as if to leave.

 

“Wait.” Jaehyun says quickly, as contritely as he can so Johnny stays. He nods toward the two gifts on the table. “I got them for you. Open them, please.”

 

Johnny hesitates—which, rude—but he must feel bad enough about his words that he relents. He picks up the smaller blue one on top and rips it open to reveal a portable speaker, a smaller model of the one Johnny had cruelly murdered just moments ago.

 

“Thank you,” Johnny says finally. “This is very nice.”

 

“The other one too,” Jaehyun says before Johnny can try to escape, curtailing his tone to be at its blandest. He knew both presents would never see a day of use, knew Johnny would rather destroy a perfectly functional electronic rather than let it anywhere inside his home, but oh well. It’s the message that’s the true gift. Eventually, Johnny obliges, drawing out a plush baby deer with large eyes and an overstuffed head.

 

“Cute.” Johnny concedes eventually, the faintest hint of a smile playing at the corner of his lips.

 

“For your little brother.” Jaehyun says pleasantly, feeling immense satisfaction uncurl as that reluctant, half-hearted thing slides slowly off of Johnny’s face. It makes sense—the strict hours, the refusal to travel, the odds and ends in his pockets that ran counterpoint to how freakishly tidy he is. A carefully placed bug had even yielded a name—but he’ll save that for a rainy day. Jaehyun smiles, radiating kindness. “Did you think I wouldn’t find out?”

 

//

 

“…and this is for you.”

 

Mark accepts the flash drive eagerly, looking as though Christmas had arrived early—which Doyoung supposes is an apt enough comparison, at least in Mark’s world. “I’ll start on it right away,” he says with a solemnity that makes Doyoung’s heart melt. Naturally, this is when Jeno bounces in to the conversation—because he can smell weakness.

 

“Welcome back, Doyoungie-hyung!” Jeno chirps, clapping him on the shoulder. “How was the club? Did you have a good time? Did you get trashed? Did you pick someone up? Did you get picked up? Did you—” He might have gone on, but then he catches sight of Mark’s dumbfounded face and bursts out laughing instead. “It’s a joke,” Jeno explains, throwing his arms around Doyoung’s shoulders. “Because Doyoungie-hyung is boring and hates going out, so the most fun he has is going to bed early, am I right?”

 

“Oh, absolutely. All of the above.” Doyoung deadpans, when his life stops flashing before his eyes.

 

Mark peers at him, concerned. “If you’re tired, you should take the rest of the day,” he says.

 

“I feel like you weren’t listening to me just now.” Jeno says.

 

“I didn’t really do any of that,” Doyoung says hastily. “I mean, mostly I just went back and slept.”

 

“Told you.” Jeno says smugly. “Boring.”

 

“Yep,” Doyoung mumbles under his breath as he moves to set his bag down. “Super boring.”

 

“No, I mean—” Mark holds his hand up. “Taeyong-hyung said to tell you to take the rest of the day.”

 

“He did?”

 

“Taeyong-hyung?” Jeno asks at the same time.

 

“Yeah,” Mark says, blinking rapidly, turning red under the twin gaze of their consideration. “It’s the standard travel policy for agents, you’re entitled to time off. You can ask him yourself, if you’d like.”

 

Doyoung blinks. “But I’m not an agent?”

 

“I mean, by that logic…” Mark shrugs and gestures around them. Which, point. Still, Doyoung hesitates, and Mark must rightfully intuit the heart of his reluctance because then he says, “I’ll need a day to parse all the data anyway, so you won’t be missing anything, really. You should get some rest.”

 

They’re not nearly as slick as they think they are—not with Jeno craning his head to catch every word or Mark’s wide-eyed enthusiasm that’s just a little bit too over the top—but two days of travel alone have really taken a toll and Doyoung decides not to look this gift horse in the mouth. He does, at some point, remember to text Taeyong just to make sure. Thankfully, Mark’s virtue remains intact; Taeyong confirms sometime in between the moment the train pulls into his station and the moment Doyoung’s head hits his pillow.

 

He’s prepared for—anticipating, a snide little voice in his head says—a restless sleep filled with smoke and hands and heat. Instead, he drops into a dreamless slumber that’s restorative and nothing else, waking up bathed in the deep gold of the late afternoon sun, a spring breeze wafting through the window.

 

Disappointing, really.

 

Taeil is watching television in the living room, and when Doyoung emerges from his room, he startles so hard that Doyoung jumps back too. “Oh my god,” Taeil yelps, clutching his heart. “I didn’t know you were home!”

 

“Sorry!” Doyoung shrills back, still whiplashing from the feedback loop of fright. “They let me out early because I just got back from Japan—for a work trip.”

 

“Oh, I was wondering where you went yesterday.” Taeil brightens. “That’s nice of them.”

 

“Yeah, I guess it was.” An image comes to mind, of Mark and Jeno in a huddle devising ways to get Doyoung out of the office so they can waste all the printer paper playing trashcan basketball, and it’s so silly that Doyoung can’t help but smile.

 

“You look happier.” Taeil says, smiling gently. “I’m glad. You used to come home stressed all the time. Now, you look like you enjoy yourself a lot more.”

 

“Aw, hyung.” Doyoung flops onto the loveseat and buries his face into the cushion, near overwhelmed by the others sincerity. “I am,” he murmurs, face down. “Thanks.”

 

Taeil reaches over and pats him on the shoulder. The opening to a music show starts playing on tv and Doyoung starts to doze again to the tune of the MCs’ opening dialogue. “By the way,” Taeil says conversationally. “Your luggage came back.”

 

Doyoung turns his head and stares at him blankly. “What?”

 

“Your overnight bag? I found it by the door when I came home. It had an airport luggage tag with your name on it.”

 

“You’re so nice to call it an overnight bag,” Doyoung yawns, rolling his head back as his eyes shutter close.

 

It doesn’t even occur to him that something is wrong with this picture until later that evening, when they come home from a quick dinner and Doyoung notices it still sitting by the door. He takes it back to his room and it’s not until he catches sight of Yuta's backpack that he remembers—he had lost this bag.

 

It had been stolen.

 

The assassin.

 

Suddenly wide awake, Doyoung eyes the duffle with new trepidation. He really should wait until tomorrow to take it to the lab, really shouldn’t risk opening it himself, really shouldn’t think about—

 

It’s packed full to the brim, much more than the one change of clothing he’d brought to Japan. He pulls out one article of clothing after another, all of them pressed and tagged. There are entire outfits folded together and even a jacket—a really, really nice wool grey that looks like it costs more than every single article of clothing Doyoung owns combined.

 

There are two boxes tucked in the center. One holds a pale pink candle with _Rose Champagne_ printed on the front and the other is a perfume with a French name that smells like flowers. Both are minimally designed and heavy in an expensive way, and knowing that he’s contaminating evidence doesn’t mean he can stop himself from touching everything.

 

He flips the bag upside down and shakes it, just to see if he’s missed anything, and that’s when it falls out: a notebook. His notebook. The sight makes his blood freeze. He had completely forgotten about it, something he had picked up from an airport gift shop and started writing in out of boredom when he realized he’d forgotten to pack headphones. Had it remained hidden? Had he seen it?

 

Doyoung flips open to the first page. Written in calligraphy, right in the center, are the words: _Hello Sweetheart_

 

Oh.

 

Oh no.

 

//

 

Getting demoted fucking sucks.

 

Not that he would have known ahead of time—it’s not like anyone ever sat him down with a chart or anything—but apparently, the next level down took him from to full dossiers to short-hand instructions that tracked him down to the second:

 

_Await further instructions at 3PM  
Do not leave your designated area_

 

_Old Seoul station at Midnight, northeast lot  
“I can’t wait to see the White-naped crane”_

 

The world’s tiniest leash held by, what Jaehyun presumes, the world's ugliest men. To be clear, yes it was worth it and he'd do it again. His only regret, now that he knows he wouldn't have made it on time in the first place, is not taking more time. Still, a warning would have been nice.

 

He arrives at the designated lot at the designated time to find a flaming red Jeep at the easternmost spot of the north lot. The front seats are clearly occupied, even from his vantage point, and when Jaehyun opens the back door, the driver-side greets him with a very loud, very rude:

 

“You’re late.”

 

He resists the urge to roll his eyes. “I had to make a delivery.”

 

“That’s not the password!” Passenger-side sing-songs, glaring at him in the rearview mirror. Both of them sound young in an annoying petulant way. Driver-side has a smug little face that matches poorly with his tragically unfortunate bowl cut and passenger-side looks like a middle-schooler with round cheeks and a six-thousand won haircut.

 

Jaehyun rolls his eyes. “Whatever.” 

 

“Still not the password!”

 

“You’re both yellow-bellied sapsuckers.” Jaehyun smiles kindly at the front. “Happy?”

 

“Fuck you,” snaps passenger-side.

 

“Close enough!” driver-side proclaims at the same time. His eyes crinkle at Jaehyun in the mirror. “I’m Jaemin, this is Renjun. Our instructions were to pick you up here—and here you are, welcome—and now we’re on standby.”

 

“That’s all you get?” Jaehyun asks in disbelief. “Not even a time or a name?”

 

“Nope,” Jaemin says with a loud pop. “If you get sleepy, there’s a cushion in the backseat. Welcome to the little-times, hyung.”

 

Dear god, it’s worse than he ever could have imagined. Jaehyun scowls.

 

“What I wanna know,” Renjun says in a tone that suggests the very opposite, “is what the hell he’s doing here. What, we weren’t doing fine on our own before?”

 

“Oh Renjunnie,” Jaemin picks up like he’s the second half of a comedy duo—which Jaehyun realizes, to mild horror, is exactly what he thinks he is—“Don’t you know? This isn’t a punishment for us. It’s a punishment for _him_. Because Jae-hyung here fucked up so spectacularly that they’re making him babysit. Isn’t that right, hyungie?”

 

“You can say that.” Jaehyun says with a thin smile. Clearly, the only real fuck-up of his was not spending more time on those who mattered. Kim Doyoung wouldn’t have snapped at him for throwing him a birthday party. Kim Doyoung would be happy with genuine effort: a cupcake and a shitty song--not that Jaehyun would ever just give a cupcake and a shitty song.

 

“Oh hey,” Jaemin says suddenly, tilting his phone so they can all see. “Look what just came in.”

 

_Target: Member of NIS  
Gangwon, 3PM_

 

Oh.

 

Oh fuck.

 

//

 

“There’s a bottle of perfume, a candle, and about five-million won worth of clothing—No!!” Jeno’s hand twitches in midair as Doyoung hefts the bag out of his grasp. He explains. “I don’t want there to be any more contamination than there already is.”

 

Jeno hums in concession. “What kind of clothing?”

 

“Like, entire sets—shirts, pants, jackets, everything.” Jeno raises his eyebrows. Doyoung sighs. “Expensive clothing,” he says, like he’s confessing a terrible secret. “ _Amazing_ , nice clothing. All in my size.”

 

“What the hell, boss.” Jeno’s laugh is strained, his amusement forced. “First he uses your name at a crime scene and now he’s dropping cash on you? Is this some kind of courtship?”

 

“Stop, of course not.” Doyoung says, too quickly, feeling his face turn red. Like a liar.

 

“Is there two of him?” Jeno asks, latching on like a dog with a bone. “Damn, I’m poor too.”

 

“Jeno.”

 

“It’s not good that he knows where you live.” Mark says, eyes wide.

 

“Yeah, well,” Doyoung says after a pause. “My fault for using luggage tags, right?”

 

“Oh no, of course not.” Mark replies hurriedly.

 

“You know I was joking about the sarcasm sign before, but I can totally make one just for you, Mark-hyung.”

 

“Hey, focus.” Doyoung says, snapping his fingers. “Give these to forensics, have them check for any traces—DNA, fingerprints, hairs—anything that can be traced to a crime scene. All the clothing has Japanese tags. Jeno, contact the stores, see if they have any memory of the buyer or if they have any security footage. With any luck, they’ll have something.”

 

“Are you sure?” Jeno asks, unease returning. “Seriously, he knows where you live. Isn’t that a little too close?” 

 

“Yeah, probably. But that’s why we have to keep going.” Doyoung says. With a flash of guilt, he remembers the notebook, tucked away under his mattress at home. He didn’t leave it behind because of what people would say, there is just some information in there that isn’t ready to share yet. If ever. Briefly, he remembers the additional header added on top of his drawing page, and clears his throat. “By the way, I think his name is Jaehyun.”

 

“Oh?” Mark asks, peering at the bag. “Did he write it down somewhere?”

 

“My roommate signed for it,” Doyoung says, reaching instinctively for the half-truth. “He says that’s what he remembers on the sender side. I think we should call him that, until we figure out who he really is.”

 

“Okay,” Mark replies agreeably, wheeling back toward his own desk. “By the way, I need to show you something too.”

 

Doyoung follows him, heaving a quiet sigh of relief. Really, the rest of the stuff in the notebook isn’t that interesting—or relevant—anyway. It’d probably cause undue distress if he showed them the drawings on the last few pages—no, he should keep that to himself. For now.

 

“So, I’m still going over all the files on Winwin’s drive,” Mark says, pulling up the folder on his computer. “There’s a _lot_ of documents and most of them were scanned as photos so it’s hard to do a quick search? Anyway, they include bank statements from accounts in the Caymans, he says his lead is almost certain these accounts were the ones used to pay off the Zhangfei. I was poking around in these transactions and I notice this SWIFT number—”

 

He points to a string of letters with the telltale KRSE embedded near the end—a Korean account.

 

“They’ve been receiving steady payments four times a year,” Mark says. “I searched the account number and found it linked in the NIS payroll.”

 

He taps the mouse and a photograph appears on the screen. Doyoung instantly recognizes it—the crooked face, the toady little eyes, that loathsome smarmy half-smile.

 

PARK EUN SEUNG

 

Dickhead Park.

 

“NO!!” Doyoung shouts, hurling his pen at the ground as Jeno expresses his version of that exact sentiment in the form of a loud, anguished wail. Mark jumps and turns to stare between the two of them, wearing a startled, fearful expression.

 

“NO NO _NO_!!!” Jeno hollers, stamping his feet.

 

“I WILL NOT.”

 

“I _REFUSE_.”

 

“So.” Mark says, approximately twenty minutes later, looking very shaken. “Um. Park Eunseung—”

 

“His name is Dickhead Park.” Jeno says flatly. “Kindly never call him anything else.”

 

“Right.” Mark says. “Um. So, Dickhead Park is currently on leave. Officially, it’s because his wife—”

 

“He has a _wife_?!” Doyoung blurts out, horrified. “Someone willingly _married_ —"

 

“No!” Mark interrupts, holding his hands up. “I checked the national registry database, he’s not married. So, I traced his personal cell and—” he pulls up a map, where a small red dot blinks slowly on a map. “He’s in Gangwon right now.”

 

“It’s really creepy how you can do that.” Jeno says.

 

“Thanks.”

 

“We should tell Taeyong.” Doyoung says. “Can we see if we can get local PD to pick him up?”

 

“I can ask, but we don’t really have any jurisdiction.” Mark says hesitantly. “You guys might have to go to the area for surveillance.”

 

“What do you mean ‘you guys’?” Jeno asks. Doyoung looks at him pointedly and Mark tilts his head toward the monitor. Jeno’s face goes utterly blank. “This isn’t happening.”

 

“Think of it as a fun little daytrip.” Doyoung says glumly, patting his protégé on the back. “Don’t forget your toothbrush.”

 

//

 

They’ve been in Gangwon for fifteen hours and the children have been arguing solidly for nine of them. It should speak to the utter hell Jaehyun is in that the incessant chattering isn’t even the worst offense he’s had to endure. One tier down apparently means spending an extended amount of time in an enclosed space with two talking heads who eat in the car, sleep in the car, and probably shit in the car for all he knows.

 

“Do either of you know how to shut the fuck up?” Jaehyun asks, very politely.

 

“Do you?!”

 

“Sorry, my friend’s Korean is not that great,” Jaemin says cheerfully. “What he means is, how the fuck about _you_?”

 

The snappy one is probably the bigger, more trigger-happy threat, but the mouthy one is gonna go first.

 

Gangwon had been nice on the way in, all rolling green hills and endless blue skies. It takes another hour until they reach the part where the tourists don’t go, with the abandoned farmhouses and overgrown fields. A shithole, but with a kind of no-nonsense honesty about its own shithole-ness that Jaehyun would probably find refreshing if he wasn’t fucking stuck in said shithole.

 

They pull up beside a grey chunk of wall that probably used to gate some type of large farm animal, but now all which remains is barely the width of their vehicle. Jaemin has barely put the car in park before his cellphone starts chirping loudly.

 

“We have a name,” Renjun announces, slipping the phone easily out of the pocket of Jaemin’s very, very tight jeans. Interesting. He angles the screen away from direct sunlight to reveal the headshot of a middle-aged man with beady eyes, a bulbous nose, and a smile that looks like a grimace. Jaehyun breathes a small sigh of relief. “Park Eunseung?”

 

“Doesn’t matter.” Jaemin says breezily, hopping out of the car and popping the trunk in one smooth motion. “He’ll be dead.”

 

The trunk has a hidden bottom that reveals a vast arsenal of weapons, big and small, close-range and distance—and not all of the items are guns. Jaehyun glances admiringly at the arsenal, his appreciation for the sheer variety almost overcoming his annoyance over the last day and a half. Almost.

 

“You cover the front; we’ll go around back.” Jaemin says. He reaches for a medium-sized bazooka and lifts it to his shoulder, seemingly mindful of Jaehyun’s growing amusement. Jaemin winks. “Don’t forget, be discreet.”

 

Jaehyun smiles. “You kids are okay,” he says cheerfully.

 

“Thank you.” Jaemin replies, matching him tone for tone.

 

“I don’t need your approval.” Renjun sniffs, hefting a comically large tennis bag over his shoulder. Jaehyun pockets two Glocks and a silencer, despite the AK-47 leering at him from the corner—personal growth and all that—and follows the two of them as they circle around the perimeter.

 

God, they’re both so short.

 

Jaemin leads them up a small hill with wooden steps hammered into a small trail whose edges are overgrown with weeds and dried foliage. It’s a far cry from any of his previous jobs—no signs of life and a surrounding aged by time rather than sentimental design. The other two slip around the back and Jaehyun enters the tiny courtyard through the equally tiny gate.

 

The house would be considered sizeable in the city, but here in the middle of nowhere, it’s just a shack on stilts, unkempt and inanimate. Jaehyun edges up to the front door carefully. Watching. Waiting.

 

He hears it before he sees it, the sound of a car engine turning and a loud “FUCK” that sounds like the snappy one. Jaehyun turns just in time to see a silver sedan peel out the back and around the curved path that circles around toward the main road.

 

From there it’s all instinct, he turns heel and rushes out the gate and down the steps. When the car speeds past him seconds later, he pulls the revolver—why the fuck had he bothered with restraint, when has that ever helped anyone—and takes aim. It’s harder to shoot out the back tires of a moving car while on the move than movies like to make it look, but not impossible.

 

It takes him three shots to hit the rear-left tire and he’s adjusting for the swerve when the cacophony of what sounds like a rocket launcher explodes into the air as the entire backside of the car is blown to bits, knocking it off the road in a smoking heap of scrap metal.

 

“Got it!”

 

“No, you missed!”

 

Jaehyun scowls, lowering his weapon. These fuckin’ kids.

 

The driver’s side door pops open and a box-shaped man—confirmed the target—stumbles out, running unevenly down the road. Jaehyun follows at a swift and steady pace, sliding the used revolver into his belt and reaching for the other one with the full magazine—no need to expend extra energy or bullets when the target is splashing his all over the place with his stubbly run and hysterical crying.

 

He takes aim when the target totters up a small hill and fires twice, making the target shriek with terror, but he manages to escape over the hill. Jaehyun takes aim again when he reaches the top, only to realize his miscalculation.

 

Over the hill, the target is running toward a white car stopped in the middle of the road. The driver’s side opens to reveal a handsome young man, wearing a white collared-shirt and dark trousers, who opens the back door and races around to the passenger’s side, right as the passenger’s side opens to reveal—Kim Doyoung.

 

Kim Doyoung in a blue-striped shirt. Kim Doyoung and his hair fluttering in the wind. Kim Doyoung who’s staring straight at him, the whites of his eyes visible even from this distance. A smile stretches across Jaehyun’s face—he hadn’t thought Kim Doyoung would follow him all the way here, but he caught him once again. Kim Doyoung is still staring when Jaehyun lifts the tip of his gun up to his lips and blows him a kiss with it, wishing he were closer so he could see that lovely shade of pink better.

 

“Whoa.” Renjun breathes suddenly from beside him.

 

“Who’s that?” Jaemin asks with a hushed kind of wonder. In one smooth motion, Jaehyun has two guns pointed at two heads. He had envisioned this exact scenario a hundred times on the ride over, so perhaps it’s inevitable all along.

 

“That,” he says with steel, “is off limits.”

 

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Renjun snarls in horror, but both of them had made the mistake of lowering their weapons. Vaguely, Jaehyun registers the sound of car doors slamming shut and the engine revving as the car speeds down the road, but frankly he’s way past caring about that. There are more important matters at hand.

 

“Guy in the striped shirt? Off-limits.” Jaehyun says.

 

“We were talking about white-shirt.” Jaemin says, all traces of humor wiped from his face. “What the actual fuck is wrong with you?”

 

“Also, you two piss me off.” Jaehyun says bluntly. He motions with his gun. “Drop it.”

 

“You’re fucking dead.” Renjun says, eyes wild as he tosses his AK-47 to the ground and backs away. Jaehyun waits until they’re ten paces away, keeping one hand trained on them and using his other to remove all the bullets, throwing the belts over his shoulder and firing the one in the chamber.

 

“I don’t know what the hell you think you’re doing.” Jaemin says. “But two failures in a row? You’re a dead man walking.”

 

“I’ll do you a solid and take you out right now, before the bosses can get their hands on you,” Renjun spits. Jaehyun smiles—he can’t help but feel a little fond of stupidity in the face of danger--and his trigger finger itches just a little less. 

 

He probably shouldn't. Johnny would probably be upset. 

 

“Don’t you kids worry about me.” Jaehyun says pleasantly as he walks backwards in the direction of the Jeep. “I’ll finish this up. You two won’t have a problem getting back on your own, will you?”

 

“Fuck you.”

 

“Thanks for understanding!!” Jaehyun says with a grin and a wave. They’re still standing in the same spot when Jaehyun speeds past them, wearing twin expressions of murderous intent. Jaehyun blows them both a kiss before turning back toward the road and the task at hand. 

 

Seoul is less than two hours away and he knows exactly where he needs to go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Long time no see and sorry about that delay!! Lol this one was a definite slog until the finish line, but anyway I hope you all still enjoyed the end result.
> 
> A few other notes: The first line of the last section was shamelessly lifted from Good Omens (whose TV adaptation is *kisses fingertips*). The yellow-bellied sapsucker is (allegedly) a real bird. This chapter will be the only one that features an original title, as the episode title (Sorry Baby) was already used for the title of this fic. 
> 
> Last but not least, a million thanks to [airedis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/airedis) who has not only been my beta / cheerleader / handholder this entire time, but also got me out of my head when I got very, very stuck. 😘😘


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